You could also just watch the sun disappear below the horizon while in the UK, then Skype your friend in LA and ponder why it's still visible in the sky where they are. If I hold a light over a dinner plate, there's no way I make it only visible on one part of the plate. If I make it a beam of light and move it around the plate, I can't make it seem to disappear over the horizon.
Posts by Annihilator
3787 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
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Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket
Get in the C: Raspberry Pi 4 can handle a wider range of USB adapters thanks to revised design's silent arrival
Assange lawyer: Trump offered WikiLeaker a pardon in exchange for denying Russia hacked Democrats' email
Re: Bollocks
"Why would there be an extradition warrant when he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London while being sought for an extradition warrant to Sweden where the UK courts would have been reluctant to send him to Sweden if there was an existing US warrant that the Swedes would act upon where the death penalty could apply?"
Jeez, not this logical contortion again. An extradition request could have been served to the UK while he was in custody before he absconded. The UK would have had to hold an extradition hearing (like they're doing now) or send him to Sweden. If the US had served an extradition request to Sweden while he was in the UK, the same thing would have applied (but more likely Sweden would have correctly answered, he's not here, you morons).
If an extradition request was served on Sweden *after* he'd been sent there by the UK, then *Sweden* would have held a hearing (incidentally, they're less compliant with the US than the UK are on extradition) but the UK would also have to hold one as a consequence. In this scenario, *both* the UK and Sweden would have to agree to extradite.
"The US, under Obama, were not going to make an extradition request until he was in Swedish custody"
Again, entirely illogical - it was easier to extradite from the UK than it is from Sweden, even without considering that in the latter scenario, both countries would have had to agree to onwardly extradite from Sweden.
"more importantly, Obama's administration tortured Bradley/Chelsea Manning with the intent of getting evidence that Assange/wikileaks actively encouraged and abetted Manning to access, export and pass on confidential information."
I think you mean, more importantly, Obama did the only thing he could to intervene - he pardoned Chelsea Manning. I also don't think there's any question that's exactly what Assange did. The pertinent question seems to be, are those the actions of a journalist? The US thinks yes, the world seems to be split along the lines of whether they think Assange is a colossal tool or not.
Xiaomi what's inside: Wow, teardown nerds find debut smartwatch isn't actually a solder-and-resin nightmare
An odd story - seemingly positive spin on the (surprising?) news that repairing a smart watch is possible, but following up with the news that it's not as repairable as the market leader.
So really, the story is "new smart watch not as repairable as smart watch from company renowned for not being easily repairable" - I'd say that was a bad thing, no?
Beware the Friday afternoon 'Could you just..?' from the muppet who wants to come between you and your beer
"If you don't have a spare mouse, how do you diagnose it?"
I would think that a mouse behaving erratic is limited only to the cursor. Using the keyboard to control the machine (alt-tabbing around) would have presumably shown a healthy machine. My next step wouldn't have been "nuke the machine". I barely use a mouse.
From WordPad to WordAds: Microsoft caught sneaking nagging Office promos into venerable text editor beta
"Consumer"
"But the fact remains that Windows for *consumers* has been designed for data collection and telemetry."
So, if this only applied to the "Home" edition, then this would almost be acceptable or understandable. But I'm willing to bet quite a lot of money it applies to "Pro" editions as well, which is utter BS..
Big Falcon explosion as SpaceX successfully demos Crew Dragon abort systems
There's something fishy going down in the computer lab
"so that the document always looked ok on screen"
Unless the document legitimately contained the word "tuna" in it. Presumably they were replaced with "the" upon loading.
I wonder also if he was smart enough to consider spaces before and after, so that words like "thesaurus" and "lathe" weren't converted to "tunasaurus" (a fishy sounding dinosaur..) and latuna.
Flying taxis? That'll be AFTER you've launched light sabres and anti-gravity skateboards
Windows 7 and Server 2008 end of support: What will change on 14 January?
"It is remarkable that Windows 7 is reaching end of support on January 14 2020 while maintaining something approaching 27 per cent market share among Windows users,"
It would be remarkable if it weren't so predictable with a healthy dose of deja vu. The same thing happened (probably with a larger percentage) at the end of NT4 and XP. Tellingly, I don't remember anyone giving a hoot when Vista went EOL...
Re: "Although it is not unreasonable ..."
Yeah think the reason they were always reluctant to do this was a) people would see just how sh1t some of it is, b) a lot of it is still actively proprietary stuff - i.e. still used in Windows 10 (and carried over from NT4/2K in some cases).
Also, the only way most people's machines are patched is through the WU servers - how you would feed patches to the general public through some sort of open source approach would be dubious and rely on the users either actively seeking it, or applying a patch to look to a different source (and then the obvious problem of who would host that source).
"With the heavy modding (disabling WU, re-enabling the Win7-style rendering engine, etc.) things become palatable,"
Yep, same here, until you're forced to update, when all the modding you've done will be partially undone, then you spend 3 months tentatively discovering the bits that were undone.
The other thing that's not really being made a deal of - Windows 10 has an even more aggressive support period. The "April 2018" build (1803) went EOL back in November last year.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet
I can't see me sticking with Windows for much longer.
Blackout Bug: Boeing 737 cockpit screens go blank if pilots land on specific runways
Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?
My eyes thank you, Google: Android to get dark mode scheduling in future update
How much cheese does one person need to grate? Mac Pro pricing unveiled
Re: Use
"Junked my last Dell because it cost more for a new PSU (proprietary twin motherboard connections for the 2 cpus) than a secondhand HP dual cpu rack mount (with much superior twin platinum psu's with hot swap that still cost less than the dell machine)."
I suspect if you can be bothered then it's pretty easy to retrofit a standard PSU and re-use the old plugs, either in a permanent or Heath Robinson configuration. Different scenario I'm sure, but I managed to string out an old Shuttle XPC while I built up a replacement when the custom PSU died (£120 replacement cost).
Tesla has a smashing weekend: Model 3 on Autopilot whacks cop cars, Elon's Cybertruck demolishes part of LA
If it's so rugged it won't even dent, I wouldn't fancy being hit by that as a fleshy pedestrian. Wouldn't fancy being the driver if it hit something non-fleshy either - I prefer the energy of my car accidents to be absorbed by the car's crumple zones, not passed straight on to me like some sort of Newton's Cradle Deathtrap.
Internet jerk with million-plus fans starts 14-year stretch for bizarre dot-com armed robbery
Stand back, we're going in: The Register rips a 7th-gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon apart. Literally
Absolutely smashing: Musk shows off Tesla's 'bulletproof' low-poly pickup, hilarity ensues
We lose money on repairs, sobs penniless Apple, even though we charge y'all a fortune
Not necessarily - trade-ins also form part of it.
However the refurbishment usually involves stripping back to the component level, testing the heck out of each component individually, ditching the duff elements, and putting all the good ones back together again in a cannibalistic fashion. Not quite the same as "just swap the batter/screen over" approach.
NASA told to get act together on commercial crew vendors as chance of US-free ISS rises
Re: I don't get the delay....
I'd say the risks were pretty well quantified, but people have trouble associating the probability of risks vs what actually happens. When you look at the Apollo missions as an example, there were 32 astronauts - 3 died (Apollo 1) and 3 almost died (Apollo 13). Neil Armstrong is often mis-quoted when people say they had a 50/50 chance. The full quote is a 50/50 of successfully landing on the moon - he thought there was a 1/10 chance they wouldn't survive - similar to what the overall programme ended up as.
Similarly the space shuttle. During the Rogers commission it demonstrated that the odds of failure were close to 1/50 to 1/100 (compared to the management view of 1/100,000). Of the 135 missions, 2 ended in disaster - a failure rate within the predicted range.
Funnily enough Nasa were highly criticised for the Shuttle failures and the lessons learned have put a toll on the size of the quality assurance. To look at it in isolation may lead to criticism of over-complicating it, but managing down to low failure rates is expensive and time consuming with good reason.
The people that then criticise this approach have little understanding of the human cost that drove the need for it. It's worth noting that the Russian approach to space flight was a lot more gung-ho - they just got lucky (and covered up their failures). Gagaran was strapped into what was basically a cannonball.
Re: Milking it..
"NASA themselves are part of the problem though - they insist of a specific set of tests over extended periods, and demand successful results at least a dozen times before certifying any part of the project, which slows things down again"
I know - damn NASA with their health and safety. Morton-Thiokol have a lot to answer for.
Royal Bank of Scotland IT contractor ban sparks murmurs of legal action
Here are some deadhead jobs any chatbot could take over right now
Re: why don't phishers script a few skills so that a voice-AI can make unsolicited phone calls
Yeah, already sort of happens really. I get unsolicited calls that try to guess how you'll respond...
"Pause.... Hello?...…… Yeah, I'm calling because of an accident you had?...… Yeah can you tell me a bit more about that?...…"
Remaining silent makes them hang up.
Blood, snot and fear: Why the travelling lone tech reporter should always knock twice
Socket to the energy bill: 5-bed home with stupid number of power outlets leaves us asking... why?
Agreed - I've previously been a fan of them, but given they have to be consuming *some* level of power consistently it feels like it's a step away from green-dom, and will naturally wear out.
I'd be a lot happier if they could have trigger switches that only activate them when a USB cable is plugged in (similar to how shaver sockets work in bathrooms - the transformer is only energised when you plug something in).
As an aside, that house in the article has just about the correct number of outlets for my liking.
I'm not Boeing anywhere near that: Coder whizz heads off jumbo-sized maintenance snafu
Re: 767
"The aircraft's fuel gauges were inoperative because of an electronic fault indicated on the instrument panel and airplane logs; this fault was known before takeoff to the pilots, who took steps to work around it"
Another highlight for me... I get slightly stressed when driving a car with a defective fuel guage, and the worst case doesn't involve the car falling out of the sky!
No extra bank holiday for 75th VE Day, but the pub will be open longer
Microsoft Surface Pro X: Windows on Arm usable at long last – but, boy, are you gonna pay for it
A History of (Computer) Violence: Wait. Before you whack it again, try caressing the mouse
Re: Does punching 'reset' count?
"It was 2003 and I was 3hrs into a Win98 install on a 486 (and my 8th reboot* after driver install) when I installed the motherboard chipset driver (from board mnfr}. Reboot"
Kids today don't know they're born - even Win XP probably needed 5 or 6 attended reboots to install. (wait 20 minutes, reboot, enter product key, reboot, wait 20 minutes, enter user settings, reboot, wait 20 minutes, enter network settings...)
And that's without the memory of 3.x and the multitude of floppy disk swaps. Thankfully was never crazy enough to do a Win95 install from floppy...
Hubble grabs first snap of interstellar comet... or at least that's what we hope this smudge is
Re: "based on its trajectory and speed, the comet had to originate from outside the Solar System"
It's clearly been launched by the Arachnids and is set to obliterate Buenos Aires. In order to claim citizenship and reap revenge on these "bugs", I've signed up to the Mobile Infantry and have been assigned to some unit called "the Roughnecks"?
We're going deeper Underground: Vulture clicks claws over London's hidden tracks
Conspiracy loons claim victory in Brighton and Hove as council rejects plans to build 5G masts
Criminalise British drone fliers, snarl MPs amid crackdown demands
Re: criminalising the flying of any drone within three miles of a licensed aerodrome.
"Something I'm not an expert on, maybe someone here can enlighten me... but surely a drone which is mostly made of ultra-lightweight plastics, weighing a couple of hundred grams and no more than a foot in diameter, could be chewed up and spat out by a modern jet engine with it barely noticing?"
Plenty of youtube videos out there showing this. "No" is the short answer. While the majority of the drone is made of nice light plastic, the batteries and the motors aren't.
Tough luck, Jupiter, you've lost your crown for now: Boffins show Saturn has more moons
When the satellite network has literally gone glacial, it's vital you snow your enemy
Watch out! Andromeda, the giant spiral galaxy colliding with our own Milky Way, has devoured several galaxies before
Hinkley Point nuclear power station will be late and £2bn over budget
Re: Earthworks
Yeah but I'm almost certain the minimalist approach to soil surveys enabled them to win the bid, with a caveat in the bid saying "further soil surveys may identify issues at a later date".
Nearly every single public sector project that involves external parties in some manner will experience some level of cost increment.