* Posts by JDX

6847 publicly visible posts • joined 28 May 2010

Apple re-arms the iMac with 10th-gen Intel Core silicon

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Re: Their older hardware is good enough (and that's the problem)

I don't think Apple expect people to upgrade their iMacs particularly often. They just keep improving the specs in line with current tech. It's not a bottom of the line beige box which is creaking when you buy it, your Mac should really last until something fails, or they drop OS support, unless you run particularly demanding software.

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Arm Shwarm

>>Apple fanbois may disagree and make what could well be the last ever Intel-powered iMac upgrade a collectors’ item. ®

This, IMO. I rushed to buy the Mac Mini 2012 for similar reasons when they ruined the 2014 iteration. I'm still on that MacMini and I suspect I might hold out until the final Intel model (rumours of a refresh are rafe) because I have no idea how running Parallels is going to work on Arm.

If you're on invite-only tech-testing scheme, take care with Amazon's Alexa-powered answer to Google's Glass

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Re: Much less capable than Google Glass

It's constantly listening, otherwise "Alexa" voice control activation wouldn't work. However it does not record all audio or maintain an open link to the server 24/7 (this would be trivially easy to detect). It technically could so easily, but it doesn't.

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140 is expensive?

For a cool gadget that hardly seems pricey, given people spend that much on regular glasses, sun-glasses, fitness trackers, etc.

Google Glass was 10X more pricey, IIRC?

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Re: Go right ahead. "...take care..." is an understatement.

>>except, possibly, to that contingent which possesses 'open-carry' or 'concealed-carry' weapons permits.

Those people are typically right wing conservatives, who are the group most opposed to this sort of tech. You've really made yourself look quite ignorant.

Someone made an AI that predicted gender from email addresses, usernames. It went about as well as expected

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Sounds like it succeeded.

Not at getting the right answer, but at getting the asnwer other humans would give e.g. on the nurse/doctor issue.

AI sometimes means acting like a human, in being wrong.

It's been five years since Windows 10 hit: So... how's that working out for you all?

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I quite like W10

I don't know if I prefer it to 7 or 8.1 really, though I do notice some minor things missing when using those that it turns out I've got used to.

My main issues with W10 is its insistence to install updates. Oh so often I find a machine has rebooted itself overnight.

Nokia 5310: Retro feature phone shamelessly panders to nostalgia, but is charming enough to be forgiven

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Re: Facebook App

If you're worried a baked in FB app is slurping all your data, then so could any other pre-installed app or even some hidden OS thingie.

Do you have ANY idea how much FB would be fined for such things? It's hardly worth it, people should gain a little perspective.

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Re: Facebook App

That's a bit like saying you won't buy a phone with a 3.5mm jack because you never use a headset. Or a house with a bath and a shower because you only ever take showers.

SpaceX pulls off an incredible catch, netting both halves of its Falcon fairing as they fell Earthwards after latest launch

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I want a documentary

It would be great if Netflix or someone (probably not Amazon considering) got permission to do a documentary on SpaceX's achievements. It's both fascinating and looks pretty cool.

FYI Russia is totally hacking the West's labs in search of COVID-19 vaccine files, say UK, US, Canada cyber-spies

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Why aren't we making all research open-source in the first place?

As title

ReactOS hits a milestone – actually hiring a full-time developer. And we've got our talons on the latest build to see what needs fixing

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Seems a bit of a waste of time

OK sure I can see that running legacy software is a legitimate use case, butat the rate this is going by the time it's actually anywhere near usable on a specific version of Windows:

a)Everyone's lost interest in the legacy software or replaced it

b)MS has open-sourced that version of Windows

I'm sure it's really interesting to work on but this seems in reality an educational experience. If you have really genuinely mission-critical legacy apps, are you going to trust them to an untested Windows clone? I love that people do this kind of project, don't get me wrong.

.NET Core: Still a Microsoft platform thing despite more than five years open source

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Why would you want to build it from source?

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Re: Who needs Ms Net Core? We have Mono.

Why use Mono when .Net Core is around though? It has far more resources behind it, surely?

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Re: What would be the point?

>I have a lot of trouble seeing anything in .NET that offers any real advantage to developers on any platform.

C# is a really good language, .Net is a pretty comprehensive set of libraries.

But you seem overly focused on GUI which is a pretty tiny part of modern software development.

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Re: Always seemed an uphill task

You don't need a GUI library for server applications, and that's what the emphasis is on. Front end is always web these days :(

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Familiarity

I would suggest that most people working on Linux are used to using other tech so why would they take the time to learn .Net? And those already on Windows are unlikely to move to work on Linux.

I would certainly look at .Net on Linux but I am unlikely to get hired for Linux work as all my background is on Windows.

Twitter mass hacking: Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, Biden, Obama, more hijacked to peddle Bitcoin scam

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Re: Obviously found a security hole in Twitter

Nobody would believe Trump would give them money.

Heir-to-Concorde demo model to debut in October

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re:so when do you think there’ll be a market?

2023 which is neatly when they promise it

Utilitarian, long-bodied Nokia 5.3 has budget basic specs - but it does cost £150

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Re: Resolution

720x1600 on a 6.5" screen is chunky?! That's not far below standard HD on most laptops at far higher DPI. I think you've been spoiled/taken in by all the marketing.

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I had wireless charging on my Nokia 1020. I liked the idea but I haven't missed it since I switched phones several years ago.

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'cos this site is full of grumpy old luddites.

MIT apologizes, permanently pulls offline huge dataset that taught AI systems to use racist, misogynistic slurs

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the dataset includes ...pictures of Black people... labeled with the N-word

The key problem is that the dataset includes, for example, pictures of Black people and monkeys labeled with the N-word; women in bikinis, or holding their children, labeled whores; parts of the anatomy labeled with crude terms; and so on – needlessly linking everyday imagery to slurs and offensive language, and baking prejudice and bias into future AI models.

I don't think I'm a particularly sheltered internet user but I've never seen a photo of a black person or a woman with a text label such as this baked in. In fact photos of things with the words describing them on top are not a common occurnace at all.

Did I misunderstand?

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Has it happened for real?

Do we evidence that these nasty possibilities have been reality insystems using these datasets?

CSI: Xiaomi. Snappy Redmi Note 9 Pro shows every fingerprint, but at least you get bang for your buck

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Re: 5g

>>consider that neither the iPhone 11 pro nor the Xiaomi have 5G, which means that in reality the iPhone may be a paperweight in 2-3 years

They're not going to turn 4g off in 2 years.

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Re: Apple?

It's the cheap iPhone. Lots of people like iPhone. Although "only £150 more" on a £250 device is quite a large "only" propertionally

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"With 64GB, it’s likely you’ll end up coming face-to-face with your phone’s limits in short order"

Only if you use it to store media I would say, or take a lot of videos. 64Gb will hold a LOT of photos. I might be tempted to spend the extra cash on an SD card rather than the 64GB if budget were that tight?

Anyway this sounds like a seriously good bang for your buck. And an IR blaster... why is this not more common?! My TVs all claim to support mobile-link via WiFi but it is a waste of time whenever I tried.

Apple's new WidgetKit: Windows Phone Live Tiles done right?

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None of my Android apps on my home screen offer content except a notification dot, and the calendar app icon tells you what day of the month it is (which I only just realised).

Unlike Apple, where you can see how many texts and emails you have from the icon.

I liked Windows Mobile, where you didn't have separate widgets and app icons. A tile could show you genuinely useful information like the weather forecast, emails, etc - there are lots of times I open an app to see one thing that could've been displayed on the icon.

Machine-learning models trained on pre-COVID data are now completely out of whack, says Gartner

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Re: But...

ML learns from historical data to make predictions. If there isn't historical data for a certain scenario, it can't learn from it.

This is the difference between human-designed algorithms, and data-driven machine learning (AFAIK).

Since we haven't had anything like this in the modern, computerised era, humans are pretty much lost making predictions too. We'll have to wing it.

IR35 tax reforms for UK freelancers glide through committee stage: D-Day set for 6 April 2021

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"IT contractors fear companies' assessments of their tax status are not always accurate"

I think that's misleading. IT contractors fear companies will simply make make blanket assessments because since the companies are the ones who will be penalised, it's in their interest to be conservative.

Folk sure like to stick electric toothbrush heads in their ears: True wireless stereo sales buck coronavirus trends

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"something you can buy on Amazon for less than £20."

You can, but you shouldn't. I've tried several in the low-price end because I refuse to spend £hundreds and they showed the promise but were not very good. I eventually got some for £35 that are actually pretty nice. As long as I don't bend over, then one of them cuts out.

I am nervous of expensive ones because I don't know they will solve this sort of glitch or if it's a fundamental limitation on Bluetooth.

I was a rather surprsied convert to them. I thought they were stupid but for gardening or DIY work, not having any wire or headband is a big boon for me in terms of comfort and not accidentally pulling them out every 2minutes. They offer quite good ear protection as well.

CERN puts two new atom-smashers on its shopping list. One to make Higgs Bosons, then a next-gen model six times more energetic than the LHC

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Doesn't sound very green

Unless they are going to cover it with solar panels it probably won't be allowed

Health Sec Hancock says UK will use Apple-Google API for virus contact-tracing app after all (even though Apple were right rotters)

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Not "everyone" has gone the Goople route. Hindsight is great obviously but let's remember Commentards here spend most of their time criticising those two companies above all others for data-slurping.

Other nations ARE running into issues with the Goople approach, and we've seen some countries that have an app, it's not really being used.

Wearables are being discussed as a better idea it seems. I would wonder if in future, all new smartphone models will include dedicated, accurate distance-measuring stuff to some new standard?

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The conference was interesting

In the extent and detail spent talking at a fairly technical level (in high level terms obviously).

The issue "the Goople distance calculations aren't good enough" seems a reasonable one to make a big deal about, given that as Hancock pointed out you are asking people to self-isolate based on this. If you spent 15minutes 3m apart on a train you do not want to be told to isolate.

All the political recrininations aside, I'm curious about the "we'll share our stuff with Goople" angle. Is that a real thing or PR fluff?

Also, do the crowd here thing an app IS the right approach? Bluetooth seems a bad technology. Will newer phones start to include dedicated hardware just for accurate distance measuring?

AWS scoops Intel silicon and 8TB of storage into new Snowcone edge box

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Re: So this means

Presumably a drone just appears in the forest and takes it back to base :)

Looking for a home off-world? Take your pick: Astroboffins estimate there are nearly 6bn Earth-likes in the Milky Way

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Pretty cool science

I remember when they confirmed the first exoplanet (90s) which means I remember the time when it was unknown if planets like earth were very rare or even unique. I'm not even that old... now we not only take their existance for granted, we know they are pretty commonplace.

How drastically this particular field has evolved in only 20ish years is pretty amazing, many of you have children who are older, when one considers what a huge impact it has on our view of the universe.

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Re: Venus and Mars

Mars has atmosphere of sorts, that can be processed. It even has water. I don't think it can be compared to the moon really.

Full stack, C++, and backend developers in demand in this week's job openings

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Re: Backend in JS!?

Wordpress accounts for 80% of hacks BECAUSE it is the majority player, not because it its intrinsically less secure. Hackers target it because why write a hack that only works on a few websites...

GitHub to replace master with main across its services

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Re: If you look for offence, you will find it

All true but black people have been systemically the target of racism from whites in the west, seemingly as a direct hangover from slave-trading days.

And not to be glib, but white-on-black racism is well, more visible, than racism between groups who look similar to each other.

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Re: I understand the irritation...

I would guess people don't want to have to do boring work implementing this change just for PC's sake, but for genuine reasons.

If everyone starts using 'main' for new projects then great. It's a good name and 'master' is to an extent less applicable in these days of DVCS I'd suggest anyway. If people are going to push for existing projects to be changed, that rather needs to be justified.

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These software activists who have been long-campaigning for such changes... are they black? If so then great. If it's just a bunch of white people telling black people what they should be offended by then that's in itself surely racist behaviour.

SpaceX is about to launch its first Starlink internet satellite sporting a sun visor following complaints by astronomers

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But it is so far a speculative investment, not something they were paid to do?

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FAirly neat but there's still going to be 12 thousand(!) of these blighers? They're used to provide some sort of giagantic space-WiFi array, is that right? Serving who -regular home internet or some more special purpose? Is anyone paying or asking for this service or is Elon assuming "if you build it they will come" and we'll all be signed up to MuskNet in 20 years... this sounds very reminiscent of a Doctor Who storyline (Tennant/Simm) to me.

US Air Force wants to pit AI-powered drone against its dogfighting hotshots in battle of the skies next year

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Steve Rogers

Is nobody going to mention this...

Anyway it's only a matter of time until AI can fly rings around humans even if we take physical advantages out of the equation. One assumes they've already got it working in simulators - in fact are there no video games featuring highly skilled AI pilots?

Seems not dissimilar to AI controlled race-car driving - that is proving a hard problem but the gap is closing.

Of course, human pilots are already entirely dependent on computers. Not just basic stuff like constrant trim microadjustments but targeting as well and presumably many other things.

Hoverbikes, Hyperloops and sub-orbital hijinks: Yes, the '3rd, 4th and 5th Dimensions of Travel' are coming soon

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Sub-orbital flight

Hard to see this getting far given the environmental focus permeating the airline industry

80-characters-per-line limits should be terminal, says Linux kernel chief Linus Torvalds

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Re: I'll display my whitespace how I choose, thank you very much.

>I'll display my whitespace how I choose, thank you very much.

That's nice, but for those of us who don't work alone in their bedroom on code nobody else will ever touch, people like to bandy around terms like 'consistency' and 'standards' .

Or maybe you locally re-format every code file each time you check it out so it's almost a per-user setting anyway and the precise whitespace details inside source-control are not important?

They've only gone and bloody done it! NASA, SpaceX send two fellas off to the International Space Station

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Re: Pretty little dot..

You say "had to" she says "insisted on"

cmd.exe is dead, long live PowerShell: Microsoft leads aged command-line interpreter out into 'maintenance mode'

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Never used PSH... question

Does it share common vocabulary with CMD e.g. if they swap it as the default command-line shell thingie, will casual users notice?

Fancy watching 'Bake Off' together with mates and alone at the same time? The BBC's built a tool to do that

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Re: Wonder why Netflix doesn't have this

It's not supposed to show you things similar to what you watched. It's supposed to show you things you might like based on what you watched (it assumes you liked the things you watched).

Netflix have invested millions into this algorithm - they ran a contest for programmers to tune it years back.

Have you tried watching suggestions? If you do, you should rate them and it will get better.

I have often been put off shows recommended, only to find they ARE exactly something I'd like.

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Wonder why Netflix doesn't have this

As a trendy tech company I am a little surprised Netflix hasn't added 'social' functionality so you can have 'friends' on their system - recommend shows to each other, see your mates' reviews and comments, etc. Adding communal viewing would then be a natural evolution. Integrating their own chat, or Twitter, even VOIP (like multiplayer gaming but for TV).

I am not saying I WANT these features because I fear it would be a mess of "Jeff just watched Tiger King" but it does seem like something a lot of younger users would use!