* Posts by Dave 126

10622 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010

Apple unplugs its home LAN biz, allegedly

Dave 126

Re: What's Going On?

Apple and Google make their money in different ways.

Not only are Google making a posh router, but also professional router brands who traditionally served offices and hotels are offering lower-cost consumer models with easy meshing and other tricks.

Dave 126

Re: Apple reportedly exiting home LAN biz

>there's plenty of competition now with better price/performance ratios.

Yep, not only are there more vendors offering mesh networking options these days, but there is now more competition for the little trick that Airport Express had: Multi-room audio.

The Airport Express had little 3.5 mm audio-out sockets, but these days many people use Sonos, Chromecast, or other ways of playing music throughout their homes.

Amazon's Netflix-gnasher to hit top gear In December

Dave 126

Re: Wheels within wheels.

>There have been various discussions around the place recently about what value The Grand Tour has to Amazon.

On a subtler note, I've heard that the Grand Tour is a great showcase for HDR televisions, for those who have them.

Why I just bought a MacBook Air instead of the new Pro

Dave 126

Re: Bye Bye Apple

>Ives isn't a HW or SW guy, purely an Arty type copying Dieter Rams.

Strange thing is Mage, Dieter Rams has a very different view to you:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8555503/Dieter-Rams-Apple-has-achieved-something-I-never-did.html

Dieter Rams has his view because, like Ive, he is a product (not industrial) designer. He knows you can't arrive at a good design just by copying - even if the results might look superficially similar. Seriously, if you were to learn about what product design entails - please do, it's a fascinating subject! - you wouldn't hold your current opinion. It is a little depressing to have one's field knocked through ignorance - when an informed discussion is much more fun.

A good place to start would be Esslinger and Frog Design - he worked for Wega before they were bought by Sony, then developed some early Macs and later the NeXT Cube. Or look at the design process for the original Sony PlayStation.

I for one remember beige boxes with some half-arsed attempt at a 'sculpted' front panel that only made it hard to find power buttons or USB sockets. May we never forget.

Dave 126

Re: Bye Bye Apple

>Ive, he just packages up stuff. If he did insist only on USB-C ports and nothing else on the MacBook Pro because it looked nice he would have been slapped down by Jobs or someone in Mac Hardware.

Seriously, you think Jobs would have disagreed? Jobs' return to Apple was marked by the iMac, a device without a 3.5" Floppy Disk Drive. It was under Jobs that Macbooks lost their optical drive.

I'm not saying that the transition to USB-C will be easy - but these things never are.

Dave 126

Re: Solder not Socket...

>Chaining monitors has been around way longer than USB-C. And speaking of USB-C - so nice of Apple to make their use of it proprietary. Can't just get ANY USB-C cable and use it with a MAC.

You can't just use any USB-C cable and use it for every application - regardless who makes the computer, monitor or other device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Type-C#Cable_wiring

The main issue is dodgy cheap USB C cables. In the last year, this Google engineer has tested a good number of cables, and has become somewhat of an authority on the matter:

https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung

Dave 126

Re: Solder not Socket...

>Corporate IT recyclers will often physically destroy hard drives before selling on the computer, but when when the SSD chips are soldered to the mainboard this isn't possible. Hence computers with built in SSDs will have to be physically destroyed to protect user's data.

If your data is sensitive, surely you'll be using full disk encryption to begin with? The last mention I can find of this being bypassed was in 2006 - in a much earlier version.

Dave 126

Re: Solder not Socket...

>Apple do this knowing full well, that a Coffee/Coke spill on the keyboard, will render your whole macbook AND its Data, GONE. There is no SSD to remove, to manually recover data.

Any data you only have in one place is data that you don't care about. This is true of any laptop, regardless of vendor, OS, or storage medium.

> You have to ask what Apple's motives are here.

To get you to back up your data, maybe? With spindled image backups built into the OS for over a decade, very fast I/O and even a cloud service should you want it, I can't think of anything else they can do to make it easy for you to back up your data.

>Buy/use a macbook Pro w/ touchbar, please remember to implement an active backup strategy, there no second chances of retrieving Data here, after the fact.

Surely that is true of any laptop? I know SSDs are more reliable than spinning rust, but it seems arbitary for a user to accept the risk that a mainboard will fail, but not the risk of an SSD failure.

Dave 126

Re: Surface is nice and all

>The touch bar DJ demo... this just gets more laughable every day. DJs use nice peripherals with knobs, faders, piano keys or hip multicolored glowing touch-sensitive pads.

I never saw the demo as being an effort to sell the Touchbar to DJs per se, but just a way of demonstrating that the Touch bar was multi-touch and not too laggy. A chef wouldn't use a Swiss Army Knife in the kitchen, but cutting a tomato is a good way to demonstrate the sharpness of a knife.

DJs do indeed have a wealth of knobs, sliders, and 'control surfaces' available to them. What is more, the rise of inexpensive I/O interfaces like Arduino means that people are in a better position than ever before to make their own man/machine music interfaces.

AI can now tell if you're a criminal or not

Dave 126

Re: dataset

>Being good-looking doesn't make criminals less criminal: it just makes them less likely to be convicted.

Yes and no. I take your point, but all things being equal, good-looking people have less motivation to commit crime. My reasoning is based on all the studies that suggest that good-looking people are more likely to be promoted at work, or attract more sexual partners. Therefore they can fulfil their needs without resorting to criminal behaviour. *

It's a bit like psychopaths - most aren't convicted criminals, because they can get all they want by manipulating people within the letter of law (if not the spirit), so they have no need to risk breaking any laws. As a result, most psychopaths are to be found in upper-middle management and not behind bars.

* There's a great episode of 30 Rock in which John Hamm's character is made to realise that people only think that he is competent at things (tennis, being a medical doctor, cooking, riding a motorcycle) because he is really, really good looking. He's 'in the bubble', which causes him to think that people are all just really nice and accommodating.

Dave 126

Re: The return of phrenology?

>I went to school in north Norfolk with a girl (born locally) who converted to Judaism. Fairly sure her DNA remained unchanged.

There was a human-interest story on Radio 4 earlier in the year about a British woman who wanted to convert to Judaism. Her conversion was recognised by the appropriate bodies in Israel, but not by those in the U.K.

I'm not sure that says anything about Judaism other than a group of people spread across dozens of countries for hundreds of years entertain a variety of views about things, whodafunkit.

Apple admits the iPhone 6 Plus has 'Touch Disease'

Dave 126

Re: Absolutely agree

>WTF? Dozens of manufacturers offer them - many with the same (LG, Samsung or Sharp made) screens as Apple buy.

Care to provide some links? Honestly, I have looked for them in vain. It just seems to be 4:3 Microsoft, 16:10 Apple, 16:9 everybody else.

This is not the first time I've asked on a Reg forum if anyone knows of a 16:10 laptop - no joy.

If you know of one, please share!

Thanks in advance.

Dave 126

Re: iFixit's teardown of macbook touchbar

>I'd actually say its been purposefully designed to fail, over time, much like the lead-free Nvidia Geforce BGA 7600/8600 Graphics chipset motherboard designs by companies like Quanta, circa 2010.

Seriously? You're suggesting conspiracy instead of cock-up? The same issue affected Microsoft's XBOX 360 console, and they honoured their commitment to the buyers affected by the issue, without even asking for proof of purchase. Lead-free solder was forced upon the industry by legislation, and there wasn't enough experience at the time to use it properly - hence it affecting quite a few companies. Leaded solder can still be used for military and aerospace applications.

Since then, experience means companies are better at using lead-free solder - so we haven't had any major XBOX 360 / Macbook GPU style problems since. For a home user, I've been led to believe that you should use lead free solder as soon as you heat it. It isn't as tolerant of being left sitting on the iron tip as the traditional leaded solder.

Dave 126

> MacBook Pro and its Touch Bar represents a rather smaller step forward than Microsoft's touchy Surface Studio workstation.

Yes and no. Much of the functionality of the Surface Studio has been previously available from the likes of Wacom, but apparently MS have nailed the hardware implementation. For example, there is less stylus to cursor parallax on the Studio than there is on the Wacom kit. However, as a product it only really shines for some types of work. The 'Dial' part is fun, but isn't yet supported by the likes of Adobe - though of course Photoshop is already well-geared to stylus input (because of years of people using Wacom screens and tablets).

The Touchbar is more general purpose, and is likely to se`ll more units than the Surface Studio. This in turns means that it will be adopted by more 3rd party developers, including Adobe Photoshop. 'Under the bonnet', the Touchbar includes a ARM-based SoC with secure enclaves inaccessible to MacOS, making it suitable for the fingerprint scanner, encryption keys and control of the webcam. This itself isn't a new concept - Microsoft tried having an auxiliary low power display with access to some laptop function years ago - but no hardware vendors could be arsed to implement it, and the rise of smart phones soon rendered it largely redundant.

Interesting times.

Dave 126

Re: Absolutely agree

>I just wish stupid people wouldn't keep buying their overpriced shit.

Why? I mean, it doesn't affect you, does it? You're still free to buy what you want.

Here's the thing: It isn't Apple that limits my choice of laptop, it is all the other vendors who don't offer, for example, 16:10 screens.

Helping autonomous vehicles and humans share the road

Dave 126

Re: An alternate take on the Trolley Problem

And another, here:

https://xkcd.com/1455/

"Can I reach the lever without getting up?"

Dave 126

Re: amniotic

>Re: amniotic: What kind of a van are you even driving?

Ah, sorry, I meant amniotic-like, hehe. I was reaching for a shorthand for a warm, throbbing, muffled sound environment. :)

At the time it was an old, under-powered Luton Transit, lots of noise and vibration in the cab. I haven't come that close to that unnerving experience of having to concentrate on keeping my eyes open since, but it concerned me enough to be wary of the phenomenon.

The Transit I drive now has electric windows - it might seem a small thing, but it allows me to safely open the near-side window, which brings cool air around my head more efficiently than opening the driver-side window (fluid dynamics, who'da though they'd be complex, eh?). Also, it's a quieter vehicle. In addition, the length of the 50 mph restriction are much shorter than they were a few years ago (but still there - what are they doing??)

Now, the other vans I drove - brand new 3 litre turbo Vitaras/Traffics, were like rocket ships when unladed. Possibly dangerous too, but they had a handy 'Eco' button that made the acceleration less insane, as well as a driver-adjustable speed-limiter. And air-conditioning.

Dave 126

Re: All or nothing yet again.

Motorways and dual carriageways are also areas that cause drivers to feel tired, or bored and distracted.

There's a stretch of 50mph limit motorway that I travel on every week in a old Transit - I always make sure to have a coffee beforehand, because the noise and vibration is so constant and amniotic that on one occasion I found it barely possible to stay awake (and there wasn't any hardshoulder to use. I got off the motorway as soon as possible, but as soon as I parked up safely to have a snooze I felt fully awake).

The effect of loud but constant noise making people fall asleep is well documented in the medical literature.

Dave 126

Re: Cocks

Especially on roundabouts - I never expect people to give way as they should when they are on my left (I live in a country where we drive on the left of the road). However, I will pretend that I haven't seen the offender, braking only enough to avoiding hitting them. Hopefully what they perceive as a 'close shave' will shock them into driving properly in future.

Obviously it isn't a real 'close shave' because I have seen them and compensated for their moment of idiocy. In any case, my vehicle, a flatbed Transit, is bigger and rougher than theirs (drivers of vehicles bigger than mine always seem to deal with roundabouts correctly, so I never have an issue with them).

Dave 126

>There are so many things wrong with the idea of autonomous vehicles...

No doubt. But there are tens of thousands of deaths each year which serve as granite monuments to the problems with our existing system.

Your phrasing is interesting... you say the problem is the 'idea' of driverless cars, and not any possible implementation.

> from the economic one of how many jobs will this tech destroy

Some might say that is actually a problem with the idea of economics, or at least our current implementation of it! :)

But you're right - just think of how many doctors and paramedics will lose their jobs if we stop killing and maiming each other on the roads. Oh, the humanity! /s

Dave 126

Re: Price hikes on the way.

>"You're insurance premium is going up this year sir, because we think you'll be acting like a dick!"

Exactly. Here's the thing: Driver speed isn't the chief cause of accidents, but it is the driver behaviour that is easiest to police. So we have the situation where driver safety campaigns solely on speed, and not on other bits of driver behaviour - such as correct lane discipline and use of indicators - where safety would benefit from being educated. ( http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/why-speed-isn't-the-only-factor-in-the-road-toll/6831300)

A black box could help with such things. "You're insurance is going up because you are... "

- driving blithely down the middle lane of the motorway when you are not actively overtaking another vehicle

- not turning your lights on when the whole motorway is a grey fog of road spray. And you're driving a grey car.

- only using your indicators when you reach a roundabout instead of beforehand. FFS, they are called 'indicators' and not 'describers'!

- going all the way down a hill with your brakes on, instead of choosing an appropriate gear.

- etc

Dave 126

It does seem that the articles is written, reasonably enough, about just dropping a few driverless cars onto road systems akin to those we have today. Here's the thing thing though: If driverless cars were widespread, there wouldn't be any schoolchildren walking along busy roads; the schoolchildren would be chauffeured to school instead.*

If driverless cars can be made much safer than human drivers (tiredness, drunkenness, distraction) then these 'trolly problem' dilemmmas will be more niche cases. The choice won't between running over a young criminal and old doctor, but between keeping a transport system that kills tens of thousands a year and striving towards a system that could be much safer.

*Just an example. And anyone concerned with a lack of physical exercise for the children can consider the lovely outdoor playspaces that residential streets could become if they weren't merely used to store parked cars as they are today. I was once in a city during a transport workers strike - busses blocked offthe roads, and the children were all out on bikes and skateboards, and playing hopscotch-type games and football.

Obviously there would be transitional period with lots of challenges.

Antivirus tools are a useless box-ticking exercise says Google security chap

Dave 126

Re: Everything can be a program, if the OS is a PoS

>Programs deleting data:

>Shadow copies / snapshots. Why are they not enabled by default on all computers, and why are they deletable?

Yes. I've made a comments here before about how every PC sold to Joe Punter should come with redundant storage and an OS configured to use it by default. It would save their IT-literate friends a lot of faffing about. Not only could the machine be rolled back to known good state, but a known clean state could be loaded at every startup, if desired.

Incremental backups don't require too much bandwidth after the initial backup, so a network solution is fine when at home - most of the time. For laptops, being semi-permanently attached to an external HDD by cable is less than ideal, but we're getting to the point where a small SSD array could be left in a USB-C port (either USB 3 or ThunderBolt) all the time. I can't see laptops including XQD card ports in a hurry (unlike SD cards, XQD uses PCIe) - oops, I'm straying away from Joe Punter to professional considerations.

Mac book, whoa! Apple unveils $300 design tome

Dave 126

Re: FTFY

- You can't just rip off a Braun design for a different product and have it work.

- You can adhere to Dieter Ram's design principals, but to do so takes time and effort. This is analogous to coding - just because good principals can be concisely written down doesn't mean that it is straightforward to produce good code.

- Rams wasn't working in a vacuum. He was part of a lineage, as contemporary designers are today. See the 'Zeiss Werra' camera from the early 1950's.

- The designs that made Ive's name didn't look anything like Braun's products.

The reason I'm defending Product Design (and not Ive per se) is that there is so much shit design out there, and it is irritating on a daily basis like a door handle with a sharp edge or a USB-A cable that only goes in its socket 50% of the time.

Dave 126

Re: when I were a lad

I had a similar book 'Digital Dreams - The Work of the Sony Design Centre'. It was full of concept sketches, design iterations and interviews - as well as product porn. The Esslinger-era Mac designs are cited by the designer of the PlayStation and VAIO range.

Apple's most famous designs from before the return of Jobs were out-sourced.

Amazon's cloudy 'WorkSpace' desktops-as-a-service gain a GPU

Dave 126

Re: Latency?

There have been games systems based on this concept, and the lag was reported to be tolerable. More recently, some CAD vendors have similar offerings. I can't vouch for AWS specifically, but some CAD forums might be able to help you. Try a search for 'solidworks CAD'. :)

Samsung sets fire to $9m by throwing it at Tizen devs

Dave 126

Your critical thinking appears to have malfunctioned. In the last decade there have been many stories about laptops and phones catching fire.

You've cited iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 models. What you have failed to do is provide context by stating just how many iPhone 6 and 7s there are in the wild. Being conservative, the figure is north of 60 million. Without that number, you can't begin to estimate the risk of any given iPhone injuring you. Just as you estimate the risk of crossing the road, cooking with hot liquids, lifting a box, drinking, going hill walking, taking a swim, owning a Samsung / Sony phone, trying to open some blister packaging without scissors....

>How much is Apple paying you $. Have you no shame? Not at all. Shameful. What a shame! Fraud media. Apple: Please, somebody, stop explosions news...Theregister Pls help me...

Uh, okay. See the above. Calm down, get good data, estimate the risks. It seems that since you don't own an iPhone, your health is more at risk from your fragile mental state than it is any Apple product. There are many meta-studies in the medical literature about that.

Dave 126

Re: Decentralized OS?

>Is it possible to set up an independent arms length Tizen/Linux foundation, and have every handset user pay (via bitcoin) to install the OS, where they then get to vote on what new features are developed by the community?

Tizen is mostly open source, with some open-source-ish bits, as far as I can make out. There is the Tizen Association which suggests changes, and the Tizen Technical Steering Group which implements changes.

The idea of users voting on features... this suggest that software features might be mutually exclusive to each other (okay, developer time is finite, I guess) which i don't quite grok. It is often hardware that limits features, and users already effectively pay to vote on hardware when they choose a handset.

Where features are limited in software, it is either because someone can't be bothered to implement it (business model), or the limitation serves the business model of the phone vendor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen#Licensing_model

Low-end notebook, rocking horse shit or hen's teeth

Dave 126

I guess one can use a second-hand mid-range notebook instead of a new low-end model.

Devil is in the details, battery life etc.

'Pavement power' - The bad idea that never seems to die

Dave 126

Re: Important Question

>the average person would recognise the feeling of wading through treacle or walking across a ploughed field

Turn the 'bug' into a 'feature': low impact cross-training for pert buttocks.

Dave 126

C'mon! Why have the gym rats turn their kinetic energy into electricity, only for the electricity to be turned back into kinetic energy? It is far more efficient for the gym rats to do the useful work (chop wood, carry water) directly.

Actually, I'm thinking of starting a new sort of gym, held outside on building sites. Members will pay me for a work-out regime that involves digging holes and carrying bricks.

Dave 126

Re: Still waiting

There is a wireless doorbell button on the market that harvests all its energy from the movement of its button being pushed. Of course the receiving unit still requires batteries or wired electricity, but the latter is easier to wire up inside the house.

Small amounts of electricity can be very useful for remote sensors etc.

Fake election news meltdown vortex sucks in Google

Dave 126

Re: Google vs Wikipedia

>I don't believe any single source on the internet and I try to ensure that different sources are independent (not just rehashes of the other).

And that's probably true of most Reg readers. Also, I suspect our average age is such that most of us still grew up with print media, which whilst not perfect, was stable enough for any half thinking person to know their leanings and idiosyncrasies: The Torygraph, the Daily Heil, The Grauniad, Screws of the World for UK readers. Many of us will have read print publications from technical or scientific sectors, too, and and see how a story is presented in the specialist and mainstream media.

This is not to say that our world views are unskewed and unfiltered, but we try to get a feel for what's going on behind the scenes. A taste for the satirical helps, too.

Also, Wikipedia's accuracy depends upon how it is used... true, most people likely don't read past the main article, but the citations,reference and article edit history are there to be examined by those who want to check.

WileyFox Swift 2: A new champ of the 'for around £150' market

Dave 126

Re: It's all in the details

I'm assuming you mean the Moto G4, and not the LG G4 - or indeed the Apple G4 Cube? :)

Samsung flings $8bn at buyout of connected car biz Harman

Dave 126

Re connected cars, Autonmous / Assisted Driving:

https://www.mentor.com/products/electrical-design-software/blog/post/5-automotive-megatrends-5cf1dcc3-14a2-4d0d-b8af-da46e42f486c

I came across these when looking into Mentor Graphics (mentioned in another Reg article today). Since a part of there business is in designing wiring looms for vehicles, they are obviously interested in the future of vehicles, noting that every major car manufacturer and technology giant is investing time and money in this sector.

Pythons Idle and Cleese pen anti-selfie screed

Dave 126

Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror

satirises this well in its new series.

Dave 126

Re: Good for them.

>To the (selfie) people out there: Do you really have such low self-esteem that you need to hijack someone else's to feel some self-worth? Pitiful..

We have evolved to be social creatures. However, much like addictions to substances being subversions of existing behavioural mechanisms, our social tendencies can be perverted by living in an environment that is different to that we evolved in. For these environmental changes, we could use 'technology' in its broadest sense - agriculture is a technology, social structures are a technology, plumbing, literacy, milling flour, crafting tools from flint, using fire - all forms of technology.

A desire to eat fatty and sugary food is a positive survival trait when such substances are in short supply. We didn't do most of our evolving in an environment where fats and sugars are usually abundant, so we might not be as good at regulating our intake as we might be.

An interesting thing: When we are lost in an environment without landmarks, we tend to walk in circles. It's theorised that this means we are more likely to find the rest of our tribe again, a tribe upon we we depend for survival.

Swedish prosecutor finally treks to London to question Julian Assange

Dave 126

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/10/edward-snowden-extradition-vladimi-putin-trump-russia

Dave 126

Off topic, but...

What happened to the promised follow-up Reg article with Adam Curtis?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/13/adam_curtis_hypernormalisation_preview/

"Ever generous, Curtis is happy to throw open the floor to Reg readers once you’ve had a chance to see it next week; he answered some of our general questions here."

(A link to the Reg's first Hypernormalisation article was presented in the column to the right of this Assange article, jogging my memory).

It's understandable if a commentator on geopolitics has been busy digesting the events of the last month.

Siemens to mentor Mentor Graphics in $4.5bn acquisition

Dave 126

Carl Icahn gets everywhere...

Billionaire activist Carl Icahn won a proxy fight in 2011 that secured him three board seats, although he quit his investment in the company in April after six years. Mentor Graphics also fended off a hostile takeover by rival Cadence Design Systems Inc CDNS.N in 2008.

- http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mentor-graphics-m-a-siemens-idUSKBN1390Q4

Google Pixel pwned in 60 seconds

Dave 126

Re: Cheaper to pay bug bounties...

>You design in the quality and security.

That don't be done absolutely.*

Here's Richard Buckland talking entertainingly about why:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/you-will-be-hacked/7861288

Basically, it is very hard to write bug-free code, even for relatively simple algorithms. And the software we use is far from simple.

*Well, there is some current work on the old concept of formally verifying code, but it isn't widely used yet.

Google's crusade to make mobile web apps less, well, horrible

Dave 126

The web is no fun.

It's damned near impossible to just get some info without an advert popping up as you're half way through a paragraph. I just wanted a recipe for Crispy Beef, damnit! It's just hard to read anything without some *event* requiring my interaction to kill it. Ad Blockers are only a workaround.

Since I pay for access to the internet, though mobile or ADSL, I wouldn't mind paying just a little more for a *usable* internet.

The adverts on the Reg aren't too bad - though the banner advert at the top of the main page sometimes obscures the articles (Chrome on Android), and a couple of years back the Reg team let an autoplay video advert slip through (to their credit, they quickly killed it and it's not happened since).

What's that, Adobe? A Photoshop for faking voices?

Dave 126

Re: The trouble with TV Go Home

>The trouble with TV Go Home is that in the years since it was created it has changed from satire to a handbook.

Ditto Nathan Barley. If Charlie Brooker were to act as George Lucas did with Star Wars and re-release a Special Edition Nathan Barley with Extra CGI Effects, he could digitally place 'ironic' beards on most of the characters and it would look like a contemporary documentary.

Dave 126

A beta version of this sotfware...

...was used for Peter Dinklage's voice role for the video game 'Destiny'.

Dave 126

One Question:

What would Toast of London say about this?

Dave 126

>We suspect this technology is bad news for soundalike voice artistes – and may prompt a shift for owners of well-known voices such as Stephen Fry (pictured below) to move to an IP-based, licensing model.

The Simpsons did it - featured an advertisement for a movie with Marlon Brando as Truckosaurus, then said "professional celebrity voice impersonator" in the verbal equivalent of small print.

But anyway - would someone please donate a Tivo, Chromecast, Netflix subscription, Apple TV or even Kodi box to Mr O? It seems that the only reason he is fatigued by Stephen Fry is that he can only watch BBC, Dave and adverts on ITV. It would be a kind act, and could brighten this Reg writer's Christmas.

Before his income from voiceovers, Stephen Fry was a writer, like Mr O - only more adept, humane, successful and well known. Still, there is positive precedent for Mr O's future career development - Charlie Brooker, the satirist, piss taker in print and on screen, and well received creator of Nathan Barley and Black Mirror used to write for PC Zone (an irreverent tech-focused publication) back in the 90's.

Charlie Brooker knew that there was so much dross on TV that to limit himself to knocking one individual would be just daft. A masterclass on how to rip into the television schedules can be found here: http://www.tvgohome.com/archive.html The humour is very much in the vein the Reg prides itself on. Because we care.

Trump's plan: Tariffs on electronics, ban on skilled tech migrants, turn off the internet

Dave 126

Re: First of all, sorry

>Trump's intellect is barely above room temperature, and he has some deep psychological issues to boot.

>> A man who probably thinks a Sarin is a new Dodge midliner..

Here's the thing: Trump evidently spotted something that was overlooked or underestimated by the political theorists, statisticians, mainstream Republicans and much of US press. The editor of the New York Times said as much last week in an interview with the BBC's Media Show - that he, the news editor, and his counterparts in other big city ( New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago) newspapers, were very slow to pick up on a sense of dissatisfaction in many parts of the US.

So, whilst I'm suggesting Trump is shrewd, it does not follow that the simple solutions he has proposed will be the best for anyone once he is in power. Let us just hope that the things he said to get elected were, well, things he just said to get elected. Let us hope, because historically, the people promising simple solutions to complex problems can be dangerous.

Sega MegaDrive/Genesis lives again, in Brazil!

Dave 126

Re: Emulation inside

> peripherals like the Sega/Mega CD and 32x won't work.

Are rare beasts indeed compared to the number of Megadrives out there - anyone with them will have had no problem acquiring an original Megadrive to use with them.

Chinese chap in the clink for trying to swap US Navy FPGAs with fakes to beat export ban

Dave 126

Re: Not surprised

Apologies for the tangent, but your mention of Polonium reminded me of an advertisement in a 1950's hi-fi magazine I saw recently: Polonium brushes for cleaning your records. I've just had to Google more about them:

https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/consumer%20products/staticeliminator.htm

Dave 126

Re: Buy rad-hard from the Russians?

You don't need powerful computers to put stuff in orbit, and I'm not sure the Russians have kept up with the stuff NASA has used for Mars rovers and other probes. The chips on the Curiosity rover, for perspective, are rad-hardened versions of what you'd find in an Apple Mac G3 in the late nineties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening#Examples_of_rad-hard_computers