* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25255 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

Page:

Musk said Twitter would open source its algorithm – then fired the people who could

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Flame

Re: Snake Oil Salesman who forgot to move on...

"Here come the villages with the tar and feathers."

Hey guys! Tar and feather is so outdated! Flaming torches and pitchforks are in this year. I just happen to have a stock of both I can sell at a low low price! Just queue right here! All branded CMT Dibbler Enterprises Plc as a sign of exquisite quality. They even come with the added benefit of burning both Musk and Twtter at the same time. I guarantee it!

Boffins find 'missing link' between interstellar ice and what comes out of the tap

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: under-construction V883 system

Or Vogons.

Mines the one with the book of poetry in the pocket ------------->

Catholic clergy surveillance org 'outs gay priests'

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Prigs

"and is never diverted to heirs."

There's almost always heirs in the bloodline. The "employer" is very far down that list. It's certainly not a given that the church will get the inheritance. Although I'd imagine there's great pressure on the employees to stipulate the church as the prime or only benefactor in their wills.

US officials probe Tesla's incredible detaching steering wheel

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"So the question is what are you paying for when you buy a Telsa?"

The same thing as some people spending $2000 on a pair of "Ye" trainers think they are getting? Ie not much more than the "name.

On the other hand, there really wasn't all that much choice in EVs when Tesla launched. Credit where credits due, Tesla did kick the arse of the EV market at the time the incumbents were still paying lip service to the idea of EVs and probably accelerated the market by a decade and so still have enormous brand awareness with the public.

AMD flips the bird at Intel as it glides past in CPU-GPU stakes

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Does it run...

Crysis?

Cop warrant orders Ring to cough up footage from inside this guy's home

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Video on Ring's servers is the problem

"That is LITERALLY the same as permission to search your house."

No, it LITERALLY isn't. They ask if you have something specific and you invite them in then that's all they are there for. If they happen to notice your coke stash sitting on the coffee table or your "pot" plants on the windowsill or all the electrical goods still in boxes all around the room, then that's your own fault for inviting them in. Unless they already have a reason to suspect you of something, they have no need or reason to go wandering about your house, opening drawers and cupboards and are not allowed to. The act of inviting a Police Officer into your home DOES NOT give them the right to search it "just because". They need a reason usually called "reasonable suspicion", ie a genuine justification, at which point you are a suspect anyway and they WILL come back with a warrant. Unless they can later show a real concern that evidence may be removed or destroyed in the meantime or an immediate threat of harm to others within the property and barge their way in. And they WILL have to justify that. But that's a highly unlikely scenario extension to my original scenario.

On the other hand, what you say may be the case in the country you live in. In the UK it is definitely not proper procedure nor is it the norm.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Video on Ring's servers is the problem

Unlikely, unless you are the actual suspect. The whole point of this type of data access is that one officer can get the warrant and examine the video from multiple cameras on that street or area from the comfort of their own desk. If they had to go door knocking to find out who might have video and then potentially have to get a warrant for each and every address, they'd simply not bother, or be far more targetted in what "evidence" they go after.

I'd imagine that if a cop knocked on your door and explained what they were looking for at x'o'clock on the nth of Octember, most people would probably allow them in to look at the video for the specified date and time from the relevant cameras. But that takes manpower and co-operation and therefore money. It's so much cheaper to get a warrant served on Ring for the address of the burglary or whatever and everything in a one mile radius

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 as a Linux laptop

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: This brought a few laughs on Friday afternoon

"My grandma does not want to hear or read about workarounds. If Linux does not work "out of the box" then it is not suitable."

So, that includes the "top-of-the-line" Carbon X1 in the review, running Windows with no built-in Ethernet port and no drivers for the internal WiFi controller? That's pretty much unusable OOTB with the latest Windows. The ONLY reason it works OOTB at retail is because Lenovo already jumped that hoop for you. Fortunately, despite some problems with some, not all, Linux distros, the author didn't report any WiFi fails when testing Linux :-)

And don't forget, MS don't write the drivers to support the hardware, they just include them. So why do you expect Linux to be different? If Linux can't support some hardware on release day, it's because the hardware manufactures didn't bother to support it. Just as they failed to support Windows 8 for "older" hardware running perfectly fine on Windows 7. Same applies to some hardware supported on Win10 but not in Win11. Windows users get screwed over regularly by hardware vendors and their (lack of) driver support. And even MS have relented somewhat on the "required specs" to run Win11 because users are not going to replace perfectly good "unsupported" kit just for a Windows upgrade a whole new version number higher than "The last Windows version you'll ever need". Get back under your bridge.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Some comments

"Like I said earlier in the comment: in order to actually be able to use Windows fully."

Oh, you were also reviewing or using it for Windows too? I got the impression from the article you were doing a bare metal install on the X1 so it wasn't obvious why you'd need to put Windows back on again :-)

> boot the Lenovo Linux Diags Tool

OK, I admit I did not know about this one.

It's very handy, especially if the SSD/HDD is FUBARred and, at the very least, can tell you if you have a hardware problem or a Windows OS or driver problem. Likewise I always carry the HP UEFI Diags tool tool and the Dell Tool too. (Other OEMs are available :-))

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Small screen non-2-in-1... why?

"I made the mistake of buying not one buyt three of those, thinking each one was an exception. They're fragile."

IME, never having owned one but having repaired many, it's down to the hinge mechanism and how the hinges are attached. The cheaper ones use a metal nut embedded into plastic and that plastic seems to age badly such that the embedded nut comes out and you need a new top cover. The better ones with a metal cover and moulded in nut are far less likely to come apart, assuming they designed the hinges properly and routed the video/camera cable(s) so there's minimal movement when opening/closing it.

I remember one well known brand laptop with such poor cable routing that just removing the bottom cover would allow the video cable to move out of position. If you didn't know this, the mere act of removing/replacing the bottom cover would then pinch the video cable and cause a failure either then and there or very soon in the near future.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Some comments

"That's why we installed all available Windows updates first – to ensure the latest firmware was installed before we began."

Personally, I would have used the Lenovo System Updater and not bothered with the potential hours long Windows Updater. After all, it's only the firmware updates you want and you can easily choose just those from the OEM updater.

"We had to choose Wayland on the login screen in order to get display scaling to work, which is a necessity for the HiDPI display: without it, at its native resolution, text is too small to read."

Global scaling is a relatively new innovation. All the other scaling options, such as choosing icon fonts, toolbar fonts etc are still there. Did they work? The artcile doesn't mention iof that was tried. I would normally not use global scaling because often it's not quite what I want. Making the fonts the size I want means the icons then become too big, so being able to scale stuff manually and individually is how I prefer it anyway.

"rendered the machine unbootable, necessitating a full reinstall, starting with Windows 11 22H2."

That's a surprise. Linux is usually pretty good at sorting out screwed up partitions by, at worst, allowing a wipe. I have seen systems on rare occasions where the boot blocks and other stuff in track 0+ is so badly screwed, the best and only real option is to boot a live OS, Linux, or even Windows these days, and write zeroes over the first few hundred or so blocks making the SSD/HDD seem like a factory new drive to the OS. Was that tried before spending time on an entire Windows install? At the very least, if the Windows install "fixed" anything, it would be safe to just kill the power as soon as the SSD was successfully partitioned, no need to do a re-install.

"the X1 Carbon only has four USB ports

That's one or two more than many laptops these days :-)

The target market for this laptop, I'd expect them to have a USB->ethernet adaptor in their kit. It's an issue with many makes and models of slimline laptops these days. The flip out RJ-45 connectors are great. Except the non-technical users tend to break them with great frequency.

"enabling us to reinstall all those Windows updates – now well over 60, including various drivers."

Again? Why? You already did that once. Any firmware updates useful with the Linux install are persistent and you did them. If drivers are also installing firmware "blobs", and you think you still need them, then they are only used when the OS boots and are lost when you power off or install a different OS.

The best way to see if a Lenovo is likely to have hardware support in Linux before installing anything is to boot the Lenovo Linux Diags Tool and see which of the diags tests are greyed out (might just indicate that hardware does not exist on your model of course). If the diags for the hardware works, then Lenovo, at least, have got drivers for it and so is likely to be available "in the wild" too.

I'm trying not to be too negative over what is a decent review overall, but the points above just struck me as really odd and likely off-putting to someone unaware of the potential pitfalls.

I don't work for Lenovo. I just happen to have a number of customers who use lots of their laptops and I have to deal with that and so have gained a lot of experience, especially diagnosing and dealing with hardware issues

Adidas grapples with $1.3B in unsold Yeezy sneakers after breaking up with Kanye West

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Maybe, just maybe

"I've got a bunch that if the shoes are sent to poor countries, there might be a single recipient, whoever controls the strongest local militia."

No need for hunches. There are many documented cases of donated goods to poor countries barely getting off the ship before they enter the cash economy rather than being distributed as intended. A friend of mine moved to an African country and also saw it first hand.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Maybe, just maybe

I was thinking that too and wondering if they can sell them at cost just to shift them. if there's no profit, hopefully that would mean no royalties (depending on the contract) and it demonstrates publically how much the "brand of Ye" is devalued.

On the other hand, if they sell them at cost, the world gets to see just how much a $2000 pair of trainers really cost and the obscene profits made simply by the name on the shoe.

60% of Germany's 5G network is Huawei, says Chinese embassy

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Force Huawei to partner with a 'local' manufacturer

But unworkable in reality. China requires that of ALL foreign companies working in China. To be true tit-for-tat and even barely legally workable, Germany would have to do the same for all non-German companies with a manufacturing presence in Germany. And get the rest of the EU to agree to that framework.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Did they really say that?

"since they are better cheaper at manufacturing"

FTFY. On the other hand, with industrialisation, wages are rising in China and even they are outsourcing to cheaper places in some cases (and also for sanctions/trade reasons too)

£2B in UK taxpayer cash later, and still no Emergency Services Network

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: voted Labour and Remain

No, it's a completely unveiled pop at the party faithfuls of both sides who are trying to re-write history. I see at least two people downvoted my comment, so can only assume they are both people who trying to do exactly that. :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: voted Labour and Remain

Not everyone who has voted Tory also voted 'Leave'.

Exactly! So many ardent brexiteers and remainers seem to forget the Brexit campaign was cross party with leavers and remainers on BOTH sides. Neither party has yet got over the splits and schisms that caused.

Sony won't budge on Microsoft-Activision merger objection

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Whatever one may thing of Sony...

"Sony also cited Microsoft's "history of non-compliance with behavioral commitments"

...they do raise a very valid point with that comment, even if it can also be applied to themselves.

The Moon or bust, says NASA, after successful SLS/Orion test flight

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

build an emergency egress system at the launchpad

"They will build an emergency egress system at the launchpad in case the crew needs to make a last-minute exit from the rocket."

Ummm...wot?!?!?

Hasn't this been standard practice, on and off, since the Apollo era?

Maybe it's just worded badly and the "emergency egress system" just hasn't been built yet because there's been no need for unmanned launches. Why build a one use system that might need maintenance when an actual human crewed launch is happening. At least I hope that is what is meant and this is not a case of "oooohhh, maybe we should put this in" at the last minute.

Wannabe space 'superpower' UK tosses £1.6M at eight research projects

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

How far can you travel on a newly built motorway for that? At anything between £10M-£20M per mile, something in the order of 0.1 miles. That ain't gonna get one anywhere near the moon. I can drive up a hill and get closer :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Modest proposal.

The SPB had a much bigger budget too!!!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: You can tell where the Gov't priorities are

I find it a little odd that, especially in this context, that "preferred suppliers" comes across as a pejorative. Preferred suppliers is just normal business practice. The potential scandal isn't using preferred suppliers, it's how those suppliers came to be on the list in the first place. Generally, it's because they provide value for money or being the friend of the barmen at the Ministers local.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Checkboxes

While I agree with you, it's worth noting there are always loopholes. eg "Made in Britain" has never meant that 100% of the materials and manufacturing must be "Made in Britain". R&D can easily be said to happen in Britain even if some or even most equipment and/or materials are imported, so long as the actual human bodies doing it are in the UK.

Financial red tape blamed for London losing Arm IPO

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Brrrreeeeeexxsshiiittt

"You got your Brexit. ARM chose not to list here in spite of this new freedom."

The financial rules are likely a large part of the reason, but another biggy, as per the original article, is that the US NASDAQ also values companies higher than here and so is likely to also be a significant consideration. If you want to sell shares in your company, the best place to do it is the place that over values the stock price.

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

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why would one ...

"Cue a new version of the Pop Tart - the Pop Pizza! I'd buy that if pissed enough."

A mini Calzone pizza? Already out there, probably all year round in Iceland, but in most supermarket freezer sections around Xmas time in the "party snack" section.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why would one ...

"I have one because I DO drink tea."

DO you call it a kettle or a tea kettle? When I hear American calling them "tea kettles" I have visions of them ruining tea by assuming "tea kettle" means putting the tea, probably tea bags, in the kettle full of cold water, turning it on, waiting for it boil, and then wondering how those stoopid foreigners could possibly enjoy drinking that mess. :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why would one ...

"(what we would call a grill in the UK"

And, IIRC, they call a broiler, usually a heating element in the top of the oven rather than a separate part of the oven as is usually the case in the UK

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why would one ...

The upside of the method is that you can then re-use the boiling water to heat a can of whatever is for pudding and then finally make a pot of tea from the very same water :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why would one ...

I can remember at least one local cafe that did cheese toasties in a "normal" toaster. Well, it was a commercial one where you put the cheese sandwich in a holder with handles and dropped it in, then lifted it out when done. But they did put the sandwich in a heat resistant plastic bag first and it cooked pretty fast so cheese melted but not enough to go runny and leak down. Annoyingly, they just put the toastie, still in the bag, on a plate, leaving you to choose whether you were hungry enough to risk burnt fingers by not letting it cool a bit first before trying to remove the bag :-) That also reminds me of a local chippy that started offering pizza'n'chips many years ago. Oooh, must try that. Disappointed is an understatement! A 4-5" McCains frozen pizza, microwaved still in the individual clear plastic wrap. Soggy and horrible!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why would one ...

Cat milk is de-lactoseised :-)

Cats, being lactose intolerant should not be give straight cows milk.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: pizza is the perfect food

"People who sarcastically write 'Elf N Safety' or variants thereof really grind my gears,"

To be fair, its just become a catch-all term but now incorrectly used. Originally that term was for insurance companies or small-minded local government officials using "health and safety" as an excuse to say no to everything when they really meant they can't be arsed to carry out a risk assessment and/or can't be arsed to check if the insurance will cover the activity.

REAL H&S is important and ought to be respected. We just have to be aware of jumped up PHBs who will "use" H&S "rules"[*] for their own purposes.

* often made-up rules.

Texas mulls law forcing ISPs to block access to abortion websites

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Paint with *that* broad a brush...

Not to mention Visa, American Express, Paypal etc since no one use cash any more ;-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Florida.... Hold my beer

Awww...that's so unfair to the Muppets!!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Freaks

Well, he did have a vested interest too :-)

Huge lithium discovery could end world shortages ... Oh, wait, it's in Iran

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Current world production

Maybe someone is confusing mass of ore with mass of refined Lithium? Dunno, but you're right, the numbers don't match.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Childcatcher

Re: don't fret!

"And if the boffins get Na-ion batteries working the price will rapidly head towards zero."

Yeah, but then they have locate and open loads of Sodium mines. We'll all be working down them!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Lithium is where you find it

He did say "most", not "all" :-p

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Lithium is where you find it

While true, in that that is what will happen, there's not that much environmental impact from the actual mining. It's a few square Km that can easily be back-filled and restored. Unless it's a "special" area. The real problem is refining it.

The problem with most of Europe is that a minority of loud voices are against anything that might damage a blade of grass. I'm not sure exactly what some of the more extremist greenies actually want, but if they object to all forms of mining, they ain't getting any more solar panels or wind turbines.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Lithium is where you find it

I remember a scene in Gregory Benfords Timescape where the people of Cambridge? Oxford? went on "mercury hunts" down the sewers and drainage system around the university.

Why our solar-storm sats corrode – and probably not what you expected

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Adjusting the filters feels like a workaround.

Would it not be better to change the thermal blanket material to something less hygroscopic?

Is this a case of optical scientists only seeing the solution that is within their skill set?

Maybe both solutions together would give the filters a much longer life.

Waymo robo taxis rack up a million miles without killing anyone

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Mis-reading…..

"Waymo is out-matching the average (inattentive) human"

No, as per another copmment I made, you can't compare the stats. Waymos miles are driven in specific geofenced urban areas, avoiding the city centre and only at the quietest parts of the night, ie 10pm to 5am[*]. The injuries per million miles of human drivers is measured across all road types and conditions, urban, rural and motorway, day, night, rush hours etc.

[*] I'm inferring that from the article. It may only be the actual public use taxi part of the trial that has time and geofenced limitations.

Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Gross misunderstanding of the tool

Ah ok , then. Since I was as curious as you about this subject I searched Google on "people named Alexander Hanff" (without the quotes and found this page and of course I assume from your comment that both references are you rather than two different people.

You do seem to have quite a unique name and, of course, your media presence drowns out anyone else with the same name :-)

Hubble images photobombed by space hardware on the up

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It's all relative

"It's kind of surprising that the number of photobombs has only doubled."

Not really. The relevant number isn't the the total number of new satellites. It's the number of new satellites higher up than Hubble minus those that have been de-orbitied as EOL. Most of the new sats by total number are Starlink and most of them are below Hubble.

Can we interest you in a $10 pocket calculator powered by Android 9?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

Re: WTF?

I think you mean Heath Robinson. Rube Goldberg was just a johnny-come-lately colonialist copy cat :-p

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Thumb Up

I was super excited to read your comment!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Tomatoes are vital for powering calculators

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Ok... I have to ask

...and some are have a small solar cell in the case good enough to run of the lights in the room, never mind actual daylight and therefore don't even need batteries.

(And no, I don't care that it doesn't work in the dark. I can't see the keyboard or display in the dark anyway!!)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: it just doesn’t add up.

"I recently typed the following digits into a calculator: 3604.59/(40*8). Anyone who can correctly explain why I wanted the result to that calculation from no other context gets a free upvote. Since it's based on an earlier calculation, it's a bit unfair. Here's another one you can try: 3*261*7."

The question is incorrect since the answer should, of course, be 8008135.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

Re: it just doesn’t add up.

Stop poking fun at them!

Arm swans off to Nasdaq despite UK gov pleas to IPO in London

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

He's just messing about. There's no 'arm in it.

The sleeveless one --------------->

Page: