* Posts by Spazturtle

889 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jul 2012

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

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But then you need to put the battery in a hard plastic or metal case instead of a foil pouch, which means you need to make the battery smaller and thus have less capacity.

The ZX81 finally gets the keyboard it deserves

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Re: Well...

You could use Topre switches instead which are each individual rubber domes.

Thousands of subreddits go dark in mega-protest over Reddit's app-killing API prices

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Re: Why not make it better?

3rd party apps are not blocking ads, Reddit refuses to serve ads to them.

Huawei could be banned from 5G networks across the EU

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Re: Very well

What 5G equipment does Cisco make exactly?

Windows XP's adventures in the afterlife shows copyright's copywrongs

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Re: Yes and no

" How do you deal with many FOSS projects' continual development cycle where part of the code is ancient and some is brand new. How do you distinguish new and old code? Line 1 gets no protection and line 2 gets protected?"

That is already the case as every contributor holds the copyright to their own commits.

Get your cheap memory while growing stockpiles push prices low

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Re: The image is a hard drive interface

That's a 2.5" SSD.

NASA experts looked through 800 UFO sightings and found essentially nothing

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Re: I know how crazy this is going to sound, but...

To make things worse the solar system is also orbiting the centre of the milky way at around 450,000 mph, and the milky way is itself also moving.

Uncle Sam vows to Micron-manage China's memory chip ban

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Re: Pot meet Kettle

"the USA side acting all upset seem to forget they have been doing the exact same thing for almost 6 years."

Yeah in response to China doing it for decades.

CERN spots Higgs boson decay breaking the rules

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The greatest achievement of the standard model is it's incredible ability to accurately predict things, we have found things pretty much exactly where it said they should be found.

Seriously, boss? You want that stupid password? OK, you get that stupid password

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'Who Me?' has just become a place for petty people to gloat about how they committed acts of economic sabotage that only serve to make the country poorer as a whole.

Microsoft and Helion's fusion deal has an alternative energy

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Re: Build SMRs instead

"It's been calculated that current SMR designs produce considerably more nuclear waste per watt generated than conventional ones."

A single disputed study said that.

"Building new ones will not help the current climate problem because they won't come online in time and by the time they do"

People have been saying that for 30+ years, when if we had started back then we would be carbon neutral by now. And if we don't start building nuclear plants now I'm sure we will still be saying it in another 30 years when the bulk of our energy is still fossil fuel based.

"they'll be providing some of the most expensive power on the grid."

The agreed price for Hinkley Point C is 9p per KWh, which is pretty cheap when you look at current energy prices.

China becomes the 37th country to approve Microsoft's Activision buyout

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You need everyone to approve the deal, what the approval means is that the country giving it will recognise the existence of the new merged company.

"but let's say the UK were the only hold-out?"

Then the deal would still be dead, but lets say they merged even after the UK said no, then Microsoft and ActivisionBlizzard would cease to exist as companies under UK law and thus wouldn't be able to do business in the UK, lose all IP protection and all their UK assets would become UK government property.

But it won't go that far, Microsoft are just making noise to try and change the regulators minds quickly. The buyout deal expires in June so if it is not done by then Microsoft will have to pay ActivisionBlizzard $3bn in compensation, and since AB stock has gone up since the deal it is unlikely they will renew the buyout deal for the same price.

Sci-fi author 'writes' 97 AI-generated tales in nine months

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Re: Did he correctly credit the sources

Do human authors credit every book they have previously read?

Is there anything tape can’t fix? This techie used it to defeat the Sun

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Re: Not only mice

But it does work like that in the Nederlands where chivo243 said it happened.

Perseverance rover shows up Curiosity with discovery of Martian water park

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Re: powerful stream in the area

"The lack of a strong magnetic field means the solar wind is able to knock gasses out of it into space ionising them. "

That's actually an unsupported hypothesis, and there is evidence to suggest that having a magnetic field actual speeds up atmosphere loss.

YouTube's 'Ad blockers not allowed' pop-up scares the bejesus out of netizens

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Re: I have never seen an ad on Youtube

"It will be interesting seeing what happens with the people who make a living via Youtube."

They don't actually make much from the ads, and if somebody complains that the video is offensive then while YouTube investigate they don't get to keep any of the ad money (and they don't get it back if cleared either). That is why they all have sponsorship deals now.

No more feature updates for Windows 10 – current version is final

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It is named correctly, it is a Windows Subsystem that lets you run Linux applications.

UK watchdog blocks Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition

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Re: Micrsoft crying like little kids

AWS and Google don't have all the necessary certification, the one ones that do are Microsoft, Oracle and Palantir (who only recently got certified).

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Re: 60 percent to 70 percent of the cloud gaming market?

Cloud gaming means the game is run on the cloud and streamed to your device, so services like OnLive (dead) or Stadia (dead).

The funny thing is that it was Microsoft who brought it up, they argued that the impact of the merger on Sony and Nintendo was irrelevant since in 10 years time nobody will buy consoles anyway as everyone will be using cloud gaming.

AMD probes reports of deep fried Ryzen 7000 chips

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Re: Stupid "Optimized defaults" nonsense.

"Bought good Micron memory and enabled the XMP feature to run the memory at the right speed(which to me wasn't overclocking as that was specifically what the memory was sold to operate at)."

I have always hated XMP.

If you look at the back of a pack of RAM it will say the RAM's actual JEDEC speed and state that the RAM might not be able to reach the XMP speed and that they won't accept warranty claims for the RAM failing to reach XMP speeds.

UK becomes Unicorn Kingdom, where AI fairy dust earns King's ransom

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Re: "...to make up for the inflation which has ravaged their pay packet, according to unions..."

Except lockdowns didn't save lives, they just spread the deaths out.

Also the idea that there was any possibility of stopping covid once it started are pure anti-science fantasy.

Military helicopter crash blamed on failure to apply software patch

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Operating complex equipment out of spec can cause strange malfunctions.

There was a (non fatal) crash of a A320 that was being used for training a few years back (Flight 9001), there were doing touch and goes, normally when the wheels contact the runway a pressure sensor tells the computers to enter landing mode.

But this is undesirable during touch and goes so pilots use the manual controls to override the computer, when the manual controls are being used a rod presses down a microswitch to tell the computer that is is being overridden.

What the pilots didn't know is that the wrong lubricate had been used on this rod, so it was not making contact with the microswitch, this meant the ELAC flight computer that controls the elevators thought that it was having a malfunction and shut down lettings it's redundant twin take over.

A single ELAC failure is not considered urgent so the warning will not show during takeoff or landing in order to not distract the pilot.

On the next touch and go the other computer also thought it was malfunctioning and also shut down, when both elevator control computers are offline control of the elevators is handed over to a different set of flight computers called the SEC.

But exactly as this happened the plane bounced off the runway, the two SEC computers poll the landing gear sensors every 120 miliseconds to check if the plane is on the ground, but they are not synchronised, one polled the sensors and decided that the plane was on the ground and the other detected that the plane was in the air both imminently detected that discrepancy and declared a fault and both shut off.

This left the plane in the air with no running flight computers capable of controlling the elevators or horizontal stabilisers, a warning sounded that use manual pitch trim only, the plane hit the runway hard with both engines striking the runway before the plane went airborne again, the impact caused the flaps to malfunction and both engines to catch fire. The safety pilot observing eventually figured out what was going on and took over pulled out of a 2.4G dive and managed to land the plane after doing a go around.

A tiny deviation from spec can cause massive faults, modern aircraft are only as safe as they are during to the maintenance standards and tight specifications and protocols.

Germany to examine China-made kit in its 5G networks over security concerns

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"However, replacing them with US made ones wouldn't be a smart move."

What US ones? The other two companies that make 5G equipment are both European.

NHS England considered using Palantir tech to manage strike disruption

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Re: OpenDemocracy article is a little worrying

"make that a condition for the PM and the Health Secretary. No going private."

If you were a conservative MP would you really trust mainly labor voting NHS doctors and nurses not to sabotage your treatment? I wouldn't.

Rust Foundation so sorry for scaring the C out of you with trademark crackdown talk

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Re: Let's play Jeopardy!

C and C++ do have trademarks, no company is going to use a language with is not trademark protected. If they weren't trademark protected then when you hire somebody to write a program in C they could just fork a different language call it C and use that.

Automation is great. Until it breaks and nobody gets paid

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Maybe each run of the script would collect the data for a single contractor and each time it was run it would increment a counter.

Python head hisses at looming Euro cybersecurity rules

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Re: Something needs to be done to protect consumers

"If they choose to give away the resulting product, then they should have no liability for errors in the product. It was free, they gained no revenue from it. Folk who use that product use it at their own risk."

Just playing devils advocate here.

If I bake some cakes and give them away on the street for free and people get sick because I didn't follow hygiene laws then I would be prosecuted.

Why should software be treated differently?

UK's Emergency Services Network unlikely to start operating until 2029

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Re: Call them out

Then the government would invoke the civil contingencies act and Motorola would find out that despite how powerful modern corporations are, they are powerless when the government wants to truly destroy you.

Nexperia claims Newport Wafer may close if sale goes ahead

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>Newport Wafer Fab currently manufactures chips using a 200nm production process that is far from the cutting-edge 5nm technology used to make the latest processor chips. Updating it to newer tech would require significant investment from any new owner, one analyst previously told us.

Why do you keep parroting these 'analysts' who clearly don't know what they are talking about. NWF make power chips. Nobody is making MOSFETs or GaN FETs at 5nm.

British industry calls for regulation of autonomous vehicles

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Not really, when you get your polling card they write the cards serial number down next to your name, and when counting the votes they write down the cards serial number and it's vote, this is all then stored in a database. So the electoral commission know who you voted for.

Don't worry, that system's not actually active – oh, wait …

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Re: Why would one ...

Modern optical ones won't be set off by burning food (unless it has actually caught fire). Their sensors are designed to detect the compounds created during a fire.

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Re: Why would one ...

No that would happen in you used a toaster, a toaster oven has a horizontal opening and looks similar to a microwave oven.

UK Prime Minister wants £800M to spend on big British iron

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And the $45m in funding that NASA gave out is split across 365 projects with a cap of $125k, so NASA seem to think that small scale funding is worth it, and they have been running funding schemes like this for over a decade.

So why do you think this sort of program won't work in the UK?

Also have you considered that the organisations that applied for funding (mainly universities) already have research staff, offices and workstations?

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So I guess you don't want the government to fund small scales projects and that they should only fund large projects?

NASA hands out similar small scale funding to smaller research projects, are you going to criticise them too?

"The agency provides up to $125,000 for companies to establish the merit and feasibility of their innovations."

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-provides-45m-boost-to-us-small-businesses

Intel rattles the tin for another €5B in subsidies to build German fab

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Re: you pay to build it, we take the money

Why would Intel agree to that?

The whole point is that it is cheaper for Intel to build in other countries, if Germany wants the fabs to be in Germany then it need to pay Intel to cover the extra expenses that Intel will incur by building in Germany.

Russian hacktivists DDoS hospitals, with pathetic results

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Re: Because

The law needs a longer arm, we need to start assassinating members of these groups who hide away in hostile states.

HMD offers Nokia phone with novel concept: Designed to be repaired by its owner

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Re: Weird

They can't do that as there are not currently any manufactures making large phone batteries in hard cases, they all make them in those foil bags which. And the cost of this phone would sky rocket if they had to set up a custom manufacturing line for the batteries.

If phone are going to regain their back cover then it would have to start with expensive top end phones.

Chinese defence boffins ponder microwaving Starlink satellites to stop surveillance

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Re: Working

SpaceX have yet to publish any data that actually shows that the savings from reusability are greater than the cost of developing reusability and making your rocket reusable.

Backup tech felt the need – the need for speed. And pastries and Tomb Raider

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Given that this was a factory computer it was probably old enough to not natively support USB.

Microsoft strokes UK's ego by pooh-poohing EU approach to AI regulation

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Re: I mean, what has regulation ever done for anyone?

"Evidence is growing that the crash was made far worse by Trumpo rolling back an Obama regulation that would have required the upgrading of the braking systems on freight cars that carried hazardous materials."

The train was not classified as carrying hazardous materials and so would have been unaffected by that Obama era policy.

Workday sued over its AI job screening tool, candidate claims discrimination

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Re: Why is he putting his DOB on his resume?

If the job listing says not to include your DOB like most do these days and you include it then you will get rejected for failing to follow simple instructions, whereas if you had done as told you might have got hired at interview stage. There are a lot more companies who are willing to hire older people than there are who are willing to hire people who can't follow instructions.

Sick of smudges on your car's enormo touchscreen? GM patents potential cure

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Re: Or ...

"And they all need to stay in the car to avoid getting dirty,"

That's fine since your car has an entire storage space dedicated to storing gloves.

IBM health benefits blackout leaves retirees footing the bill

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Re: Makes me sick it does

Sick people who can't work don't contribute to the economy, the economic benefit of keeping people in work pays for national healthcare.

IBM demands $500,000 from boss after she jumps ship

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Re: Breaking a contract that is no longer in force?

This style of contract would likely be legal in Europe as well as this was a separate contract to her employment contract. She signed a contract where she was being paid to not work at certain companies for the duration of the contract and then decided to break her side of the contract.

Craig Wright's crypto wallet claim against Bitcoin SV devs back before judges

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Re: Puzzled

"if you control 51% of the miners, you can force the blockchain to whatever you want"

No you can't, the other 49% would reject your change, what would happen is that you would create a new fork and everyone else would stay on the old branch.

China's spy balloon barrage earns six of its companies a spot on US entity list

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Re: One thing seems certain.

This whole event has shown us multiple things, that China's satellites are much worse then we thought, that they can't do in orbit interception (the US has at least one reusable space plane and Russia has a few interception satellites that can be used a few times each) and that they don't understand that other countries are run differently to China (they could have just purchased a small civil aviation plane in the name of a US citizen and put the equipment in the back and then flown over the sites legally).

Bank of England won't call it Britcoin but says digital pound 'likely to be needed in future'

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Re: But why is this necessary?

Because it makes it easier to switch to a multi currency system which has clear economic advantages and has been something the central banks have been salivating over for years.

For example:

The BoE issues currency A and currency B.

You can only get paid in A and store A in your bank account but it can't be used to purchase things.

You can't get paid in currency B or store it in your bank but you can use it to purchase things.

The BoE controls the exchange rate between the two currencies, when you go to buy something the exchange is done using the current rate.

So with this system when the BoE wants people to reduce spending instead of using crude systems like adjusting interest rates, they can directly change the exchange rate between the two currencies and lower how much B you get for your A, and vice versa when they want to increase spending..

Uncle Sam greenlights first commercial nuclear small modular reactor design

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Re: Buy My Stuff

It doesn't even work for those of us in developed countries either.

Developed countries are not the final form of civilisation, and progress is driven by energy.

Why would anyone want civilisation to stay at it's current state for the next 10k years.

Our goal should be to increase energy production so that we can progress and future generations can colonise the stars.

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Re: Buy My Stuff

So you want the human race to regress then.

All progress has been driven by the increased supply of energy in one form or another.

Microsoft shells out for 2.5GW of solar. Not that it'll make a big dent in its emissions

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Re: Eh, what???

They are measuring they emissions in a certain way to inflate the number so that in a few years time they can change how they measure it and claim that they have massively cut their emissions.