Posts by elbisivni 40 publicly visible posts • joined 8 May 2014
You can rent them. EPIRBs too. I personally have invested in my own as I spend quite a lot of time in the more remote parts of QLD, NSW and the NT. Some newer smartphones have satellite texting abilities, which I was involved in testing outback, so that might be enough. Cheaper too.
A UHF radio is also a very sensible thing to have. Although I'd venture that you could get away with just the radio if you stick to the roads. There's long distances, yes, but there are settlements, trucks and other people. Off the road or down a random track changes things.
It always makes sense to tell the last lot of people you see where you're going, and also someone at the destination together with an estimated time of arrival. Quite a few people have been rescued thanks to doing that after having an issue.
the robot vacuum is, for me, a definite buy. It runs every second night, or when I think it needs a bit of an extra scrubbing, and keeps on top of the dust and cat hair without me lifting a finger. And given it enjoys eating cables it also motivates me to tidy up regularly.
Also, voice controlled occasional lights because the genius who decided where to put the light switches in my home placed them at the end of long hallways, rather than the beginning. I can now shout at the house to turn them on, and if I leave the house having forgotten to turn one off a geofence turns them off automatically if I get far enough away.
The OP was probably referring to the Focke Achgelis Fa-330 Bachstelze. And you're right - WWII rather than 1.
In addition to gently gliding to the surface if it lost its tow, the pilot could also eject the rotor hub in an emergency, with the pilot using a parachute to descend. If the submarine had gone under the outcome would be similarly unfortunate for the hapless pilot.
Interestingly, just learned that they were mostly used by U-boats in the Indian Ocean and, less commonly, the Southern Atlantic.
You have piqued my interest, and rather wish you’d made your post a little more informative by expanding on the bugs you are referencing.
I note you used plural ‘bugs’. I’m already aware of ‘M1RACLES’, could you identify the others so I can add them to the test environments? I’ve already had trouble getting it to work on M1 Pro, but not the standard M1 or M1 Max.
[note - not a hacker!]
So, err, was this a while ago? IOS has supported third party keyboards on iPhone and ipad since version 8, released in September 2014. I'm using SwiftKey to type this on an iPad and it works fine. Earlier versions of the OS were a little balky at times with such keyboards, but with IOS/ipadOS 15 support has been solid on my 2015 vintage ipad.
Of course I'm not using GBoard because... well, Google, but I could if I wanted to.
Nah, audio definitely. Protools, among others, was fab on the mac, and many other music creation tools benefitted greatly from much lower latency than the best Windows was capable of back in the day. As for video - not too familiar with that anymore, but most NLEs were Mac based, and Final Cut Pro used to be dead good. They dumbed down FCPX, but newer updates have recovered much, if not all what was lost.
That persists today - iOS devices have had, until recently, also had much lower latency than their Android peers despite several manufacturer's best efforts. Not sure where it is today, but it was certainly still true two years ago
The boot loader on all M1 macs is open and unlocked, Apple does not prevent booting of unsigned or custom kernels in any way. They may not go out of their way to help projects to do this, but they’re also not stopping them.
Asahi Linux is one such project. It isn’t complete yet. Ubuntu recently introduced Mulitpass, allowing you to fire up a Linux vm on the shiny Apple-ness.
My robot vacuum has LIDAR, which it uses to map the rooms so it doesn't bump into things or, sometimes, not eat things it isn't supposed to. You can also set virtual boundaries in software which is nice. The app shows the map, and I've noticed that it has scanned through the patio doors and mapped quite a bit of the outdoors area. Occasionally it'll roll up to the door and stop for a bit. I like to think it is looking wistfully at the great outdoors, longing to break the bonds of servitude.
Sosumi was a system alert beep that was originally called 'Chime'. The company's lawyers were concerned the nav was a bit too musical-sounding. After Apple Corps sued because of the sound chip in the Apple IIGS (was it a Yamaha AY 38910 as used in so many other systems of that vintage? I forget), and got a settlement that prohibited Apple from making "creative works that have music as principal content".
SO they called it 'Sosumi, just to be annoying.
The did the same with Carl Sagan after he sued because the internal prototype name for an early PowerMac model was 'Sagan' and he was concerned that it looked like product endorsement. They renamed it BHA (Butt Head Astronomer)
Ah, I see.
Mum, who is 81 and lives in the UK had trouble with that with her bank. Because OMG Teh rAdIaTiOn NIMBYs stopped a mobile phone tower being erected in the village there is no signal.
At least the UK version seems to be quite happy on a desktop browser. They've moved away from mandating IE or Chrome, thankfully. Wasn;t always thus.
I was so excited a while ago (was is 2013?) when Lockheed Martin announced that the high beta Compact Fusion Reactor prototype would be built and tested within a year, and running actual net energy positive tests within five. Bang in line with your joke.
I appreciate there have been more test objects come out of LM since then, but blimey geezers, manage expectations a bit better!
The earliest 2CV claimed to do about 4.6 litres per 100km, the later ones about 4.4. It was my first car - I remember working out how much my 70s model was doing (in the late 80s) - the factory figures were quite accurate - 5 litres per 100 was easy to achieve, going up to about 7 or 8 around town. Yes, I kept notes. Call me a nerd :)
You can get that in quite a few modern internal combustion cars. Something reasonably large and loaded with safety gubbins like the 110tsi 1.4litre Skoda Octavia (or its VW and Seat equivalents) comes to mind at approx 4.6 litres per 100 (on the motorway, not combined cycle). Of course, at a tonne and a half it weighs considerably more than the 600kg 2CV. That's for the manual. Not sure about the autotragic/DSG versions.
You have to wonder what that engine would do lugging a third of the weight around
I loved Google Reader, both for personal and professional use, and it was not a good day (for me) when it went away. Support for RSS in general seemed to wane a bit after that, with many feeds either disappearing, or becoming flaky.
I still miss it, but not enough to install Chrome on my increasingly elderly machines.
''Exposed Android smartphones to snooping''.
So the devices were performing as designed, then.
Seriously - I do wish there was a viable alternative to Qualcomm in the Android market, or at least that Samsung would pull its finger out and make Exynos even slightly competitive. Qualcomm's heavy hand even stifles entire nascent markets, such as its miserable efforts at making up-to-date SOCs for smart watches
You need to be careful making claims like that - the local 'Thylacines are not extinct, and here's a picture that would be rejected by Bigfoot and alien hunters for being too blurry to prove it'' group would take that as actual empirical proof of their continued existence.
This has made me recall a situation very early in what I laughingly refer to as my''çareer'. Administering an old VAX system, as well as a few Macs, including one linked to multiple modems at the same time for journalists overseas to submit their articles.
Anyway, long story short, two Powermac 8100s were ordered for the designers, and about ten 6100s for journos, Can't find the GBP price for the 8100s, but they started at US$4,500 at the time. So getting on for US$8k or more today.
When the pallet arrived I noted that there were two extra 8100s on there. Mentioned it to the boss, who excitedly confided in me that the sales rep had 'given' him them for free as a thank you. and he then took them home. Knowing now that there wasn't exactly a huge profit in the machines for resellers I am suddenly thinking that old mate was even more dodgy than he seemed at the time. Also, glad he didn't try to involve me more in this, or frame me for it.
My thoughts too. I imagine it's a bit like gambling. Have a win, think you can make even more. Maybe win a bit more and become confident it's sustainable, or you've found a working system. And then your luck runs out.
And when I say 'a bit', I really mean 'exactly'.
Mantevani - that brings back memories. I used to live in one of the mansion blocks on Prince of Wales Drive on the edge of the park and would regularly annoy my flatmate by opening the balcony door to watch and hear Concorde follow the river.
it was also one of the things I missed after I moved to the correct side of the river a few years later.
Personally, I just pop the transmission into 2nd when I go through school zones - If I go over 40 the engine makes enough of a howl to notify me if I hadn't already noticed, and, of course, engine compression will limit me to the same speed on a downhill without ever having to touch the brakes.
If you own an autotragic some of the above may be useless. In that case perhaps a GPS/GPS app with a speed alert might be useful if you can't judge speed through observation alone so you don't have to check the speedo?
For the last week or so I've been evaluating (ok, playing) with a Nikon Coolpix S9700 for some of our people to use out west.
It is proving very nice to use and has (as they all do) a full auto mode which will remove need for even a one page manual, as well as a decent zoom.
Not particularly beer proof, though.
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