* Posts by Francis Boyle

2735 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2007

Crash, bang, wallop: What a power-down. But what hit the kill switch?

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Re: Quick

Even in the badlands? Better consult Marty Robbins.

US kids apparently talking like Peppa Pig... How about US lawmakers watching Doctor Who?

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Re: Doctor Who

"Federal politicians". Like "M$' it's a form of idiocy signalling.

I am just a mapper: Solar drones take to the skies above Blighty

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Re: What goes up with the aid of a launcher...

Navy pilots might disagree.

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Nothing wrong

with a log scale.

Never mind that naked selfie scandal... Brazil lights the, er, kindling, dot-Amazon saga roars back into life

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Re: What naked selfie scandal?

All you need to know about Bezos: He frequently gets it out, usually can get it up but he never manages to reach the big O.

Earth's noggin took quite a clockin' back in the day: Now a second meteorite crater spotted under Greenland ice

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Now don't be sad

Cause one out of forty* ain't bad.

*OK, one out of 45.43 but what's a few hundred million years between friends.

Happy Satellite Collision Day! It is 10 years since Russia and Iridium got too close for comfort

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At least China is trying to do something about it*

Trump not so much.

*15 nuclear plants under construction and it's looking like they may be the ones to crack fusion.

Holy planetesimal formation, Batman! Ultima Thule's no snowman – it's a friggin' pancake

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Re: Relic?

Well, I'm in the solar system and while I maybe a relic, I'm not that old.

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It's fine

He didn't say 'bottom'. That would be naughty.

AI gets carded, China and US agree on robot wars, Amazon claims Rekognition is just fine

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You can only misuse it by using it incorrectly

Well, I suppose that's alright then.

What a re-leaf: IBM's AI smarts to tell 'leccy companies when their bushes need trimming

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FFS

The Tesla battery is there to provide very fast response (sub-second) load balancing in order to prevent the sort of cascading blackouts that happened in 2016. It does that very well, while saving considerable amounts of money. (It's much cheaper to draw from a battery to deal with transient demand than spin up a power plant.) And no, Victoria didn't shut down all businesses. In the face of a massive heat-wave some of the largest users were asked to cut production so that the AC could stay on.

I know, it's a waste of time replying to people who think the use of all caps is a persuasive rhetorical technique, but as an Australian I feel some sort of duty to correct people spouting nonsense about my country.

Pixaaaarrrrrrghh! Mars-snapping CubeSats Wall-E and Eve declared dead (for now) by NASA bods

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Only

if they happen to be painted red with the word fire painted on the red in back-to-front letters.

Fake fuse: Bloke admits selling counterfeit chips for use in B-1 bomber, other US military gear

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It's the assumption that heavy penalties will deter crime

In most cases it works, but there's always someone prepared to take the risk.

Francis Boyle Silver badge

Re: No that's not "Upcycling"

I'd agree if this was a simple case of passing off used as new, but this guy had his suppliers re-mark the old chips to appear new. There's your " made in exact imitation of something valuable".

El Reg talks to PornHub sister biz AgeID – and an indie pornographer – about age verification

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Re: Huge loophole?

So a lot more work for this guy then.

I studied hard, I trained for years. Yay, now I'm an astronaut in space. Argggh, leukemia!

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On the plus side

it makes absolutely certain that none of them have been replaced by shape-shifting extra-terrestrials which according to my research is the real danger of space travel.

Whats(goes)App must come down... World in shock as Zuck decides to intertwine Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp

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I amazed

that that's the only thing you want to uninstall from your Samsung.

Should the super-rich pay 70% tax rate above $10m? Here's Michael Dell's hot take for Davos

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Re: Who gives a crap

The difference: We have our faults but most of us aren't not actually psychopaths.

Francis Boyle Silver badge

Re: Income Tax - Smincome Tax

If those yacht builders were truly "enterprising" they'd find other markets. And under a more just system being laid off wouldn't be a traumatic experience. But I suppose it's important to keep the workers afraid.

Francis Boyle Silver badge

Well

it stands to reason people who are good at getting all the money will be great at giving it away. I mean it's exactly the same thing but in reverse gear.

What do you mean psychopaths?

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If we're doing a representative swap

I put dibs on AOC for Australia. In a few months we'll have a mob of unemployed wannabee trumps with ministerial experience. Free to anyone who'll give them a good (or preferably not so good) home. Pity there are no prison hulks left. There's that whole convict thing we owe the UK for. Not that that would be fair. We're pretty happy with the people you sent like this bloke and especially this one.

Starship bloopers: In touching tribute to Tesla shares, Musk proto-craft tumbles – as Bezos' Blue Origin rocket lifts off

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Re: ...pretend to be astronauts.

How much piloting do you think the average astronaut actually does?

It depends. Armstrong's piloting was legendary. (The moon landing took real skill but it was Agena incident that showed he really did have the Right Stuff.) Shepard, on the other hand, was pretty much just payload on his most famous flight.

By gum(stick): Samsung speeds up 970 EVO Plus drive

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Nice

I was expecting a "well I can't possibly justify that" price. Seems like now would be a good time to fill my so-far unused M.2 slot.

Tech giant to spend $500m dealing with housing crisis caused by tech giants

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We all know they have the same (worse?) problem in SF

Google?

Most munificent Apple killed itself with kindness. Oh. Really?

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Re: Re-lightening plug.

Aren't keyboards already dirtier than toilets? In case faced with the expense of a new phone or a bottle of Dettol I know which I would go with.

RIP 2019-2019: The first plant to grow on the Moon? Yeah, it's dead already, Chinese admit

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I'm relieved

that you have identified it as silicone adhesive. . .

Huawei and Intel hype up AI hardware, TensorFlow tidbits, and more

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Re: Deepfakes

Well, she definitely "convinced" me but, then, so did Lisa Ann.

Hubble 'scope camera breaks down amid US govt shutdown, forcing boffins to fix it for free

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I think you might be on to something

If only they'd let Washington build a wall along the Canadian border the White House might not have been burned down.

Talk about beating heads against brick walls... Hard disk drive unit shipments slowly spinning down

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Maybe not

But someone has to pay for the R&D.

Who cracked El Chapo's encrypted chats and brought down the Mexican drug kingpin? Er, his IT manager

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Well at least that soles the mystery

of what Reynholm Industries does.

The D in SystemD stands for Dammmit... Security holes found in much-adored Linux toolkit

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You're using software irony detection

Believe me there's nothing like a good old hardware irony meter. Nothing beats the "sproooiiing' sound they make when they overload.

Steamer closets, flying cars, robot boxers, smart-mock-cock ban hypocrisy – yes, it's the worst of CES this year

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Of course it makes sense

One of the CES organiser lent it to his now ex girlfriend.

Also, I think you have inadvertently swapped the sex toy and the flying car pics.

Fake news? More like ache news. Grandma, grampa 'more likely' to share made-up articles during US election

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I didn't downvote you

but I think I know why those four people did. Probably something to do with the fact that you falsely claimed that the oligarchs in question are anti-Russian. Even the RT report you link to wouldn't go that far and it's RT.

(For the uninitiated there are pro and anti Russian groups in Ukraine — they tend not to get along.)

In short your claim of fake news is, surprise, fake news.

If you've been dying to run some math on a dinky toy quantum computer, IBM may have something for you

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In the 60s

fusion power was 50 years away. OK, we missed that deadline but by nowhere near as much as common wisdom has it.

Bish, Bash... gosh! Good ol' Bourne Again Shell takes a bow as it reaches version five-point-zero

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No

That's the current paycheck for a US Government employee. Hopefully someone out there knows the syntax for assigning it a new value.

Chinese rover pootles about... on the far side of the friggin' MOON

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Nah

The bomber FOUND ON THE MOON disappeared a few months later. Strange that.

Happy new year, readers. Yes, we have threaded comments, an image-lite mode, and more...

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Thus

messing with every other site (and indeed most of this site) that uses the extra space intelligently.

Florida man stumbles on biggest prime number after working plucky i5 CPU for 12 days straight

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Don't worry

He'll be back to doing drugs and trying to eat people's heads in a jiffy.

Fake 'U's! Phishing creeps use homebrew fonts as message ciphers to evade filters

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Yes

I suspect that like hijacking airliners with box cutters and flying them into buildings this is a security hole that can only be exploited once.

New Horizons snaps finish buffering: Ultima Thule actually two dust bunnies that got snuggly 4.5 billion years ago

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Upvoted

for the pang of self-awareness.

Forget 2019's tech biz takeovers, here's the mega-merger everyone's talking about: Milky Way and LMC, coming soon

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AIUI

Collision with Andromeda is scheduled for 4 billion years. Typical galaxies! You wait 7.4 billion years for one and then they all come at once.

The Great British Curry: Put down the takeaway, you're cooking tonight

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Hot oil, sharp blades, heavy metal and alcohol. There is no way this can end well.

It's 2019, the year Blade Runner takes place: I can has flying cars?

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Try

typing "I can ha" into Google. You'll get "I can haz" as a suggestion. No "I can has" is not in the list (at least for me). "I can haz" haz become the canonical form. Evolution. It's how language works.

An upset tummy and a sphincter-loosening blackout: Lunar spaceflight is all glamour

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Re: Atheist vs. Bigot?

Well, if you attack them with guns and bombs, probably. But if you say they're wrong and probably shouldn't attack one another with guns and bombs because of their beliefs, then, no.

London Gatwick Airport reopens but drone chaos perps still not found

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"environmental rights terrorists"

Please don't use that word to describe people who aren't actually in the business of causing injury or death*. It's inaccurate and makes you sound like the Daily Mail.

* I shouldn't have to say this but I probably do. Nothing in my post is meant to support or excuse the people behind this attack.

A few reasons why cops didn't immediately shoot down London Gatwick airport drone menace

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You're assuming the operators didn't want the drones to be seen. Everything points to the opposite.

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By god you've got it!

Just a hire a few people who can create a GUI in visual basic to track the drone's IP address.

Postmates plans rollout of autonomous delivery robots in US

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Almost certainly

too slow for food delivery. Might be useful for sending things around relatively uncrowded campuses but anywhere else they're likely to be kicked to the kerb, literally.

Virgin Galactic test flight reaches space for the first time, lugging NASA cargo in place of tourists

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Re: "Superficial Marketing Tosh" Virgin is hardly a pathfinder

" it's merely an expensive carnival ride"

Exactly. If Richard Trevithick == 1950/60s NASA, Virgin Galactic == whoever built the first roller coaster.