* Posts by Francis Boyle

2735 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2007

Tesla sued over Tokyo biker's death in 'dozing driver' Autopilot crash

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Not if the speed is zero

Tesla's system is well known not to be able to "see" stationary objects which is actually fine for cruise control. (A stationary car, fire truck, or barrier is not "the car in front".) But since people can't be relied on to remain attentive when everything is being done for them the onus in on Tesla to up it's game. Maybe Musk should just swallow his pride an accept that lidar has its uses.

International space station connects 100Mbps symmetric space laser ethernet using Sony optical disc tech

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Not a problem

Their space suits are of course designed by the same people who do the female armour for fantasy games.

Watch now the three UFO videos uncovered by Blink-182 star – and today officially released by the Pentagon

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Someone

who can't even do capitalisation is involved in the production of avionics software. Well that explains the 737 MAX.

Forget tabs – the new war is commas versus spaces: Web heads urged by browser devs to embrace modern CSS

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What's wrong

with 256 colours like God and Tim Berners-Lee intended?

There are always two sides to every story – except this one, which is just a big billboard borked in all directions

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Re: "even in these interesting times, artisanal dough prodding will endure"

"I wonder if they've finally worked out how to mass produce pizzas whose bases don't immediately turn into dry cardboard when cooked?"

McCain achieved that long ago. Their pizza bases come from the factory as dry cardboard.

Star's rosette orbit around our supermassive black hole proves Einstein's Theory of General Relativity correct

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Hello Bishop Berkeley

There are no "things" that require an observer to become "real". The universe has been completely real for approximately 14 billion years, most of that time without any observers in evidence.

Paranoid Android reboots itself with new Android 10 builds

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Not Samsung itself

I have three Galaxy Note 5s. (For reasons.) Two of them run custom roms. The third is still stock. The reason? It's an (ex) AT&T device which will never get a custom rom because AT&T wouldn't allow the bootloader to be unlocked and no one managed to crack it. Strictly speaking I can't say how easy it is because all my Android devices have been Samsung so I don't really have a baseline but I've never had from the Samsung side. Indeed the software that does the flashing (Odin) was leaked from Samsung (apparently several times as there are several versions floating around) and, as far as I know, Samsung has never done anything about it. Just stay away from AT&T.

Oh ... Fudge This Pandemic! Google walks back on decision to switch off FTP in Chrome 81

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It looks like

the FTP user base just about double in 20 hours. Must be making a comeback!

Academic showdown as boffins biff-baff over when Version 1.0 of Earth's magnetic core was released

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That's

flat Earth logic – "I haven't observed the Earth to be round so it must be flat".

From Amanda Holden to petrol-filled water guns: It has been a weird week for 5G

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In this case

I think it would be like capacitors where all the common values are in the micro and milli ranges.

Soichi to join three-spaceship club, SpaceX is going to the Moon (no, really), and rocket boffins step up COVID-19 fight

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Re: Space junk?

They're low Earth orbit satellites. De-orbit is built in.

Are you extracting the urine, ESA? Why, yes it is, from Moon dwellers to build homes out of lunar regolith. Possibly

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So

Moonbase Alpha will actually be called Moonbase Number One.

Astroboffin gets magnets stuck up his schnozz trying and failing to invent anti-face-touching coronavirus gizmo

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Especially when

swallowed by the black hole he's using for a doorstop.

Remember that clinical trial, promoted by President Trump, of a possible COVID-19 cure? So, so, so many questions...

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I agree

It's completely unreasonable to expect Trump to express an idea as complex as "people are working hard on treatments but results will take time" so, when he said something completely different, people should have understood that that was what he really meant.

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I think I get it

You're an old-fashioned moralist. You desperately want people to be better You think that only when people become better will they deserve a better world. But it's you who have got it backwards. We make people better by making a better world. And to do that we need concrete suggestions. So if you're worried about inefficiencies in the way scientific research is directed (which may or may not be a problem – you haven't exactly proved your case) you need to look at the mechanisms of reward rather than complaining that scientists are being selfish. (That science is a general public good doesn't actually require individual scientists to be be any less selfish than the general public. That's the thing about science – it's a mechanism for overcoming individual human limitations.)

Want to see through walls? Electroboffins build tiny chip in the lab that vibrates at just the right frequency to do it

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Sometimes

relatively high power for a very short time is exactly what you want. Inertial confinement is the only one that comes readily to mind but I'm sure there are many others including ones not even imagined yet.

Self-driving truck boss: 'Supervised machine learning doesn’t live up to the hype. It isn’t C-3PO, it’s sophisticated pattern matching'

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Re: Such honesty

We can't give people from the thirties contemporary IQ tests but we can give contemporary people thirties IQ test and they consistently and measurably better than thirties people did. Whatever you think of IQ tests (I don't think much) it's clear that people are getting better at abstract reasoning.

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Brain the size of a planet and you've got me controlling traffic

I don't wan't any sort of intelligence controlling the vehicles I travel in. Trains have been extremely safe for something like two centuries despite for most of that time relying on a complex system of interlocking metal bars to prevent things crashing into other things. I want safety systems to be built on simple robust logic. That's one of the reasons I think Musk's refusal to have anything to do with Lidar is a serious mistake.

Hong Kong makes wearable trackers mandatory for new arrivals, checks in with ‘surprise calls’ too

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Re: What a time to be alive

Exactly. For most of human history dying of infectious diseases, not just pandemics, was a commonplace fact of life. It's perhaps the greatest achievement of our species that we've turned it into a rare tragedy but the corollary of that is that we know longer have any collective sense of how to deal with it when it happens. (Cf. anti-vaxxers.)

Reach for the sky: Pixar founders win Turing Award for pioneering 3D animation – and getting rid of jagged edges

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Came here to saw

Clark wuz cheated!

Yes, I use Blender.

Yanking on the space supply chain: Rocket Lab goes Interplanetary with Sinclair acquisition

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But

if Elon can launch a roadster into space surely they can manage a C5.

European electric vehicle sales surged in Q4 2019 but only accounted for wafer-thin slice of total car purchases

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Typically

something like 5%.

In case you want to flee this wretched Earth, 139 minor planets were spotted at the outer reaches of our Solar System. Just an FYI...

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Re: Detection

These things are Kuiper belt objects. You're really going to have to ramp up the power if you want to see anything in the Oort cloud. Maybe borrow a spare supernova from the neighbours.

Broken lab equipment led boffins to solve a 58-year-old physics problem by mistake

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I.E.

Science. Everything else is engineering. (To an approximation.)

Astroboffin Kurtz ends 40-year quest to find a predicted one-sided vibrating star that was never seen – until now

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The illustration is an artist's conception

And not a very accurate one. Tidal bulges appear on both sides of an object – it's why we have two tide cycles each day.

California tech industry gets its first big coronavirus hit: RSA Conference attendee infected, in serious condition

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If

only there were some form of worldwide communications network that could take the place of these conferences. You could even make it wireless to make it even more convenient. I've heard a rumour of one but I suppose these WISP folks know better.

The Reg produces exhibit A1: A UK court IT system running Windows XP

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No one goes to jail

If you fuck up a Facebook post.

NSO Group fires back at Facebook: You lied to the court, claims spyware slinger, and we've got the proof

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I don't think

Zuck's ageing program is working correctly.

Grab a towel and pour yourself a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster because The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 42

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I have done the calculation

and can assure you that it is a finite probability.

So there's no chance of you accidentally finding yourself on Magrathea though you may end up at your destination naked. (Your clothes will be in the boot).

Want to own a bit of Concorde? Got £750k burning a hole in your pocket? We have just the thing

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"may not post to Australia"

Dammit, that's me out. Oh well, I've always preferred Spitfires myself. I wonder if that guy in the US with all the Merlin parts does postage to Australia.

Microsoft pushes out fresh version of '90s throwback PowerToys suite with plenty of fixes – and one nasty bug

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Coincidently

I've just finished setting up Widows on my new laptop. Open Shell plus Winaero Tweaker go a long way (though not all the way) to making it not look like Win 10. (I don't exactly want to make it look like Win 7 because I hate the start menu in a box thing).

RIP Freeman Dyson: The super-boffin who applied his mathematical brain to nuclear magic, quantum physics, space travel, and more

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Nothing ignomious

in dying at 96 among those who love and respect you.

Pope tells his followers to log off for Lent

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HTTP

Holy talk time protocol.

'I give fusion power a higher chance of succeeding than quantum computing' says the R in the RSA crypto-algorithm

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I think

the canonical form is "If you think blockchain is the answer you're asking the wrong question".

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

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Once again proving that

Spike Milligan was a visionary.

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Re: Don't underestimate steam

The "jet pack guy" (pr guys – I believe there's more than one now) lands by parachute so if he experiences a hard landing* he might end up with a sprained ankle.

*As opposed to a "really hard landing" but the latter is a risk every flyer takes.

Come on baby light me on fire: McDonald's to sell 'Quarter Pounder' scented candles

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The site

describes the candles as "votive". I really don't want to imagine the god which would accept them as offerings.

One man is standing up to Donald Trump's ban on US chip tech going to Huawei. That man... is Donald Trump

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Agreed

We've certainly created a monster in the internet. The Utopians among us thought that information would set us free but it turns out that when it comes to politics information is not what is needed. . .

And they said IoT was trash: Sheffield 'smart' bins to start screaming when they haven't been emptied for a fortnight

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SpaceX's next Starlink volley remains stuck on Earth to glee of astronomers everywhere

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Musk could have made the albedo as near zero as makes no difference but that jerk Anish Kapoor wouldn't sell him any Vantablack.

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Or

Resting Under Dirt, the dirt being mostly produced by all that broken litho.

S20 Ultra 5G: Samsung unfurls Galaxy flagship with bonkers 108MP cam, 6.9-inch display

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Re: AAs

Not sure why someone felt the need to give you a thumbs down for merely explaining your use case. It's not my use case, and it's probably not most people's but nothing you said is incorrect and you have a point about non-standardisation of battery types. (I'm sure this will be sorted out – right after camera manufacturers agree on a common lens mount.)

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Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

Can't disagree with you about how got those old Pentax lenses are but AAs? Batteries are one area where I have no fond feelings for the ways of the past.

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Seconded

The thumbnail looked pretty bad and my first response to the full-size was "Ugh – this has been over-sharpened to hell".

Still, I assume this is a jpeg straight from the camera for which over-sharpening and day-glo colours are pretty much de rigueur. Samsung (high-end at least) phones have long supported raw capture, which has saved me on occasion when my DSLR decided to die on me, so I imagine it will be possible to get decent images out of this.

Tech can endure the most inhospitable environments: Space, underwater, down t'pit... even hairdressers

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Re: Carniverous computer

Whatever it was I'm sure it was pretty offal.

Who's got the WD-40? Owners of Motorola's rebooted Razr whinge about creaky hinge

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Yes,

but as mentioned in the article the real 8110 isn't spring-loaded so you're never going to look as cool as Neo.

In case you wanna launch your boss into the Sun, good news: Earth's largest solar telescope just checked and, yeah, it's still pretty fiery

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Yes we do

And I* demand that the Reg Standards Bureau ratify it as a official standard forthwith. (Can't have those yank sneaking in their region-based area standards first.)

*I also demand that I am Australian.

Alan Turing’s OBE medal, PhD cert, other missing items found in super-fan’s Colorado home by agents, says US govt

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Re: Inventory

Turing's fame outside the tech world rest, I think, mainly on his cryptography work which was kept secret until the seventies and even then took a few years to filter out to the general consciousness (and even longer to transmute into a form of reverence*) so I don't blame the school for not appreciating the value of what they had all the way back in the 80s.

*I'm not suggesting that Turing doesn't deserve his status a a secular saint and martyr, just noting the process.

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Turing

is what you do when you've lost your false teeth.

SpaceX ponders its next mission to blot out the Sun with another 60 Starlink sats

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But

you have to admit that's one helluva booty call.