* Posts by PhilipN

1363 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2010

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Rancher faces prison for trying to breed absolute unit of a sheep

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Impressive horns

Most likely^ the reason for wanting to bag one, to stick the head on the wall as a trophy. Which means there’s no other reason such as food. How disgusting.

Otherwise why not make a smaller sheep so it is more of a challenge - even with a semi-automatic.

US Congress goes bang, bang, on TikTok sale-or-ban plan

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What's that whooshing sound?

Ah yes. US social media dollars flooding into D.C. pockets.

Singapore startup SiliconBox to open packaging fab in Northern Italy

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Shared cultural values - garlic

Byung Joon Han is a very Korean name.

Boeing paper trail goes cold over door plug blowout

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"Paper Trail ..."... "..paperwork..."

What??

US politicians want ByteDance to sell off TikTok or face ban

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Cold War

Make no mistake - this is where we've been - again - for some time. Back then it was Hollywood and Reds Under the Bed. Today it's social media and National Security.

Apple's Titan(ic) iCar project is dead as self-driving dream fails to materialize

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Never did make sense

Face it - our roads have been cobbled together over the past century, mostly badly, with incremental improvements but in many instances left to fall apart. Throw an autonomous vehicle on to that lot - alongside masses of other vehicles wrangled by less-than-rational beings? Mad.

Now if Apple had been given the chance to re-build the entire California road system ...

Rivian decimates staff to put a brake on spending

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"laser-focused" > dead giveaway.

The latest expression which causes me not to bother with the rest of the article/speech/mea culpa since it reveals prior stupidity and future desperation.

Rice isn't nice for drying your iPhone, according to Apple

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Re: "An old lightning charger"

You mean that gender changer you desperately needed to find but turned out to be male-male instead of male-female or female-female

Space nukes: The unbelievably bad idea that's exactly that ... unbelievable

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No surprise

There is no profession more determinedly self-sustaining than the military.

India won't become a semiconductor superpower anytime soon, says think tank

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ITIF

Worth looking up every "think tank" and its "About" page -

https://itif.org/about/

and being particularly circumspect at every such organisation which describes itself as :

"independent ... nonprofit, nonpartisan research and educational institute"

Apple Vision Pro units returned as folks just can't see themselves using it

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$3,499 x 200,000

Gulp!

Damn Small Linux returns after a 12-year gap

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CD-ROM - no less

I remember those but refuse to feel old.

Quarter of polled Americans say they use AI to make them hotter in online dating

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“a love interest who later turned out to be a fraudster”

So what else is new?

Sam Altman's chip ambitions may be loonier than feared

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Re: Personality cults ...

My local newspaper no longer franchises Dilbert but given [how many?] decades ago he witnessed VC’ers similarly swooning over “streaming multimedia” - GASP! - Scott would be able to milk this story for every drop.

Deepfake CFO tricks Hong Kong biz out of $25 million

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Right - how many companies were targeted?

Just this one company? Still, that's a lot of work. Which means "they" knew in advance exactly which company to target. Funny that ....

Windows 11 24H2 is coming so we can all shut up about Windows 12 for another year

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decade+ old CPUs

Well if you must go for the new-fangled stuff

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

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Re: Ramble, blither

I beg to point out that there are literally hundreds probably thousands of Chinese teas from all over the country from different climates soils altitudes etc and more ways of brewing it than you can shake a stick at.

For example some years ago I read about the American (I know - I know) scientist who took something like an hour an a half to brew his perfect cuppa of Chinese (NOT Indian) tea.

And don’t even get me started on Japanese tea ceremonies etc. Nobody West of Java stands a chance with ‘em.

Software troubles delay F-35 fighter jet deliveries ... again

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"continually upgradable"

What could possibly go wrong?

Logitech warns of logistical impact of Houthi attacks in Red Sea

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"getting its channel stock closer to normal levels....

....following the roller coaster ride during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic". Which was how many years ago?

Happily Logitech now have something else to blame their logistical and planning failings on.

Apple has botched 3D for decades. So good luck with the Vision Pro, Tim

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Re: Not convinced

Right. Uncle Sam believe it or not did not invent the pizza but did do interesting things with it.

Similarly China invented (discovered?) gunpowder but it took the West to do something really useful with it.

AI PC hype seems to be making PCs better – in hardware terms, at least

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"Can't do that, Dave"

My GPU is not powerful enough.

Tech billionaires ask Californians to give new utopian city their blessing

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Re: Biggest problem.

Yup. "Cadillac Desert"

Why do IT projects like the UK's scandal-hit Post Office Horizon end in disaster?

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"Returning" the CBE

Nope. Empty gesture. She was still given it and there is no official cancellation of the award. Just another slick move to divert real consequences.

NASA, Lockheed Martin reveal subtly supersonic X-59 plane

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a quieter "thump"

Huh. Where's the fun in that?

As a wee lad we lived in the flight path of Greenham Common. When the teacups started rattling we ran outside for a better look. THAT was fun.

UK PM promises faster justice for Post Office Horizon victims

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Re: No Justice

Thanks - a must read.

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Re: No Justice

The Eye was not the first to blow the whistle - in 2011! - as Ian Hislop graciously acknowledged. The honour goes (if memory serves) to Computer Weekly - two years earlier!

America's first private lunar lander suffers 'critical' fuel leak en route to Moon

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Right but it’s a crying shame either way.

2024 already …..

Apple sets new 16,000-foot iPhone drop test after 737 fuselage fail

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Is that an African swallow?

Microsoft pulls the plug on WordPad, the world's least favorite text editor

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Inkwells

Filled from one of those less-than-a-pint-size bottles with the stopper + metal spout on the end?

Blue-black - right! Sufficiently gloomy to presage immediate squashing of those ghastly nibs in the clumsy hands of kids for whom finesse was some years away.

China's GPU contender Moore Threads reveals card that can cope with Nvidia’s CUDA

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Re: Commodity tat

"As soon as China have viable "mainland" alternatives ..." and when TSMC has its plant up and running in Arizona Taiwan will no longer be worth the bother. It is being sidelined by both the USA and China,

Doom is 30, and so is Windows NT. How far we haven't come

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Seagate

.. had to ramp up production to handle all the Doom wads eating up the digital real estate as fast as they could build it

China's SpaceX wannabe recycles a rocket after just 38 days

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Re: "I" stuff

Right! Forgot all about that. Had one. Nifty little device.

Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

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Re: Exactly what destroyed the UK car industry

Yeah. Land Rover Defender parts from all over Europe and finally bolted together in Croatia.

Was that one of those reckoned to be "built in the UK"?

Central console in my UK-branded car "Made in Czech Republic".

That's a UK Car industry?

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Re: Exactly what destroyed the UK car industry

My point exactly. And who mentioned USA?

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Exactly what destroyed the UK car industry

Unions want to force Tesla to the table when they have no agreement in place. In other words they want to be the ones making the rules. Why would Musk then even be stupid enough to make an agreement knowing that the unions will use it as a weapon at every eventuality?

Nvidia sees Huawei, Intel in rear mirror as it grapples with China ban

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"..shadowy .... covert ..."

You mean, as in the USA, Taiwan, Netherlands the entire ecosystem is not public knowledge?

OpenAI meltdown: How could Microsoft have let this happen after betting so many billions?

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“not being "consistently candid in his communications" with the board”

About the same as every public company. The successful business executive knows how to manipulate his Board.

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Re: What about Non-Competes?

Quick - call Darl McBride!

IBM-led advertising X-odus gains steam as more flee Musk's platform

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IBM ...Twitter...???

Why'd they ever think it was a good idea to be on it in the first place?

Space Force turns to Falcon Heavy for spaceplane's seventh mission

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Space Force?

Confess I had to look 'em up. 100% military.

(Potential) conflict has always driven cutting-edge technology. Sigh.

Major telco outage leaves millions of Australians disconnected

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Re: 99.99% uptime and Short Memory Syndrome

Apologies for the P.S. but this is interesting :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_telephone_number

London 1937 first direct dial emergency number.

But whatever the system nothing beats talking to another human.

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99.99% uptime and Short Memory Syndrome

Beggars belief that emergency calling - which has been with us now how long - 100 years? had no backup in place (few posts above).

Which traditional system of communications worked? Genghiz Khan had Pony Express type messengers to transit the whole of Eurasia. The English system of hilltop beacons worked pretty well. Otherwise we’re back to jungle drums.

Welcome to the future and the bigger problem is after the expletives we shrug and go “oh well”.

X says it's only worth $19B after year of Muskmanagement

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Still the World's richest

He's supposed to care?

A cheap Chinese PC with odd components. What could go wrong?

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VM; support

At those prices you load one OS per machine. When it fails - throw it away.

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Re: Running Linux Mint

Link says Windows 11 Pro

‘How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie’ guide updated by US and South Korean authorities

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Re: Best code ever!

Then all those packages started arriving from Amazon ....

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North Korean plant

A Triffid?

Look ma, no fans: Mini PC boasts slimline solid-state active cooling system

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Zotac

Since nobody has addressed the point amongst all the smart-alecky remarks, I have tried a couple of Zotac products and was pleased with them. Particularly handy when the desk space is limited. I shall give this one a whirl.

Microsoft CEO Nadella's compensation drops... to $48M

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Mangled Micawber

Salary this year more than last year = happiness

Salary this year less than last year = misery

Biden has brought the ban hammer down on US export of AI chips to China

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Good write-up

Thanks

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