* Posts by Sealand

127 publicly visible posts • joined 31 May 2013

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Five ways Apple can fix the iPhone, but won't

Sealand

The really short answer to what I'm missing

iOS 6

Every time Apple said 'machine learning', we had a drink andsgd oh*][

Sealand

Re: "Machine learning" not new

Doesn't matter. We all know the answer is 42.

Astroboffins clock thriving stellar nursery nestled in violent supermassive black hole

Sealand

Re: Meanwhile ...

Right - thanks. No sense pursuing a career as a starsmith, then.

I'll stick with electronics and marvel at the stuff the boffins show us.

Have an upvote.

Sealand

Meanwhile ...

... here on earth we're hyping cloud computing.

Anyways - as stars ignite when gravity is balanced with the outward radiation force, why are some stars much much larger than, say, our sun?

Could it be something with the conditions in which they're born - like being shot out of a star cannon or some equally awesome place, as opposed to peacefully accumulating stuff from a gas cloud and then igniting when the time is right?

Another day, another cloud price cut – from partly free to all free

Sealand
Big Brother

Free as in what?

“makes it easy to quickly, securely and reliably MINE your database … with zero downtime.”

FTFY

Samsung is on fire, overtakes Apple as world's #1 chip-shifter

Sealand
Joke

Samsung is on fire

Try a different brand of batteries.

'It will go wrong. There's no question of time... on safety or security side'

Sealand
Facepalm

As a colleague once said: "you write in C and debug in assembly".

That held true once when a simple C case structure failed for no apparent reason, but only on hardware. By inspecting the assembler code, it turned out the compiler had made an error, but the simulator had the exact same flaw that cancelled the error out in the simulation.

Just wait until the AIoT ... the artificial intell ... oh, you know what I mean.

Meet 'Moz://a', AKA Mozilla after it picked a new logo

Sealand
Coat

S://y buggers ...

No more will I tailor Swift: Code lang project lead leaving Apple

Sealand

No Tesla for me, then

I've been using Xcode for many years. That's more than enough, thank you.

You know how cop cars pile into each other in old comedy movies? That's how the Moon was built, say boffins

Sealand
Pint

Earth-like

Perhaps Theia was also made from Earth-like material?

And what happened to the Bluesmobile ?

Remember that brightest supernova ever seen? It wasn't one

Sealand

So - disruption really is the new black ...

Apple again late to another market others pioneered. Or is it?

Sealand
Coat

Re: The all-new Apple iCar!

The electric version of the iCar will have one USB-C port for charging, and continuous nagged/forced updates to the carOS will cause it to go slower and slower.

Siri, where's my coat?

Nissan reveals self-driving chair

Sealand
Stop

Wait for Apple to pick this up

So at the launch of the iPhone 8, we can expect to see lines of chairs waiting to get a phone? And of course, said phone model will be running iOS 11 which includes a ChairKit API.

Does this qualify for an igNobel nomination?

Samsung: And for my next trick – exploding WASHING MACHINES

Sealand

Re: For the hat trick

> They don't have an aircraft engine division do they?

Not that I know, but Samsung Heavy Industries is into both shipbuilding and offshore.

Surely there must be some potential.

Apple killed OS X today and binned its $10,000 BlingWatch too

Sealand
Facepalm

So that's cutting edge design then ?

The high-gloss jet black casing is designed so that if you want to keep it shiny, you need to hide it away?

Design for the sake of the design - AGAIN - and not for the sake of the product or the user.

Can a knighthood be revoked?

FBI Director wants 'adult conversation' about backdooring encryption

Sealand

Re: Mr Comey's position...

As an acquaintance (who's actually a doctor) once said about such a tantrum: "Just let him hold his breath. When he passes out, he'll start breathing again."

Apple pollutes data about you to protect your privacy. But it might not be enough

Sealand
Holmes

Re: as Apple hasn’t been on reliant on digital advertising

"Apple sells high margin hardware and x3 supermarket margin on iTunes sales. So Apple doesn't need advertising at all."

Which of course only applies until competition forces Apple to lower their iThing margins, at which time they have the data ready for unpolluting and subsequent mining.

Sneaky brown dwarf gives us a bright flash and astroboffins are confused

Sealand
Mushroom

Re: It's obviously trying to start a fusion reaction...

I was going to suggest a new ignition coil, but you could be right.

Apple WWDC: OS X is dead, long live macOS

Sealand
Facepalm

About time too

Siri, the microphone on my iMac does not work - how do I fix it?

Siri ?

SIRI ??

sigh ...

Apple to kill off Mac OS X?

Sealand
Pint

@I.M.Gumby Names, schmames

"... you have to pull up the app store ..."

... which is as clunky as iTunes and as slow as Windows Update to actually show what's up.

Sigh!

To be fair, I'll probably live with those inconveniences for a while longer, because the one thing Apple has really nailed is backup. Time Machine has saved my butt more than once. Never got backup to work properly on Windows and certainly not as smoothly as Time Machine does it.

But I digress ...

Have a thumbs up and let's all celebrate the fact that it's Friday.

Sealand
Windows

Names, schmames

Having used a Mac since 1993 and having an all-Mac household I may qualify as a diehard, but the name of the OS is utterly insignificant and any traces of Siri will be turned off as the first thing.

Getting their cloud services to work properly and allowing me to kill the daily update reminders would be a great way to make me stop considering another platform.

Not a Windows user, but a grumpy old man. Harumpf!

You deleted the customer. What now? Human error - deal with it

Sealand
Facepalm

Re: Confirmation dialogues

Confirmation is (or was) not enough to protect you from me.

Back in the days of floppy disks, I was learning how to use the DOS commands by doing. Deleting multiple files using wild cards (like file*.* or file*.dat) was handy until I wanted to delete a number of files ENDING with the same characters.

I told the OS to delete *file.* and was asked to confirm.

Yes, dammit, that's what I typed, wasn't it?

... and the disk was empty.

I would have liked a couple of those "Are you really, really ..."

The case for ethical ad-blocking

Sealand
Mushroom

Use the hosts file as an ad blocker

Block the worst domains with your hosts file. Have done for a long time, and it works like a charm. Ad-blocker sniffers never see it coming.

http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

Who would code a self-destruct feature into their own web browser? Oh, hello, Apple

Sealand
Pint

Re: Sooo...

"I've never realized how unstable that house of cards had grown"

That's nothing.

Try working in Xcode on a Mac more than one week old with iTunes running in the background. To me that's proof that the 2nd law of thermodynamics also applies to software.

At times like that I think Douglas Adams was right - we should probably never have come down from the trees.

Have one on me, everyone.

Boffins baffled by record-smashing supernova that shouldn't exist

Sealand

I really like the mental image of a magnetar going kerpoof, but this was probably something trivial like their LHC at full throttle being thrown into reverse by mistake.

Astroboffins EYEBALL 13 BEELLION-year-old galaxy far, far, farthest away from Earth

Sealand

"Boffins might guess with limited data but it's still a guess (and conviently keeps them employed for a few more years)"

And for the next 5 million years boffins will keep guessing, and finally someone will come up with the right answer.

It *will* be 42.

And we will realise that all that time we didn't really know the question ...

Earth wobbles on axis as Google rebrands

Sealand
Thumb Up

Re: Sans serif

You nailed it.

This is about a logo that is easy to print on things.

Skeumorphism doesn't work well on a plastic or metal surface.

SPECTRE-tacular: New trailer out for Bond 24. But where's the pussy?

Sealand
Go

Looking forward to it also.

Going back to the story origins with current movie tech is so the right thing to do.

Pluto revealed as KING of the Kuiper belt

Sealand
Pint

Whatever we call it, I don't think Pluto or any possible dwellers there really cares.

Unless of course its real name is Krikkit, and we've just given up our position ...

Sorry, say boffins, the LHC still hasn't sucked us into a black hole

Sealand

Re: How would we know?

So what you're saying is that they may in fact have produced a black hole, but if they did, nobody noticed since we're all inside it?

I wonder how many times that has happened before ...

NASA's New Horizon probe rudely fires its thruster at gnome planet

Sealand
Pint

Come one, people. The probe is 2.95 billion miles away. Try it yourself with a twisted pair phone cable and see what bit rate you get.

Once again astronomy baffles me:

" Without the course correction, New Horizons would have been 20 seconds late, and 114 miles (184 kilometres) off the planned route"

20 seconds late?

114 miles off?

After travelling 2.95 beeellion miles?

And they know that and fix it by speeding up a bit?

Here's to the boffins that do the math.

Version 0.1 super-stars built the universe – and they lived all the way over there, boffins point

Sealand
Coat

For a minute there, you had me pondering the size of the launch pad ...

DuckDuckGrow: Privacy search soars 600% after Snowden dumps

Sealand

Re: Other privacy-friendly search sites are available.

ixquick.com and startpage.com also claim to be privacy-friendly. They're basically the same with startpage being the brand name in the US.

Whether or not their privacy claim is legit I can't say.

But ... but iOS 9 could BLOCK my Ad-Block, dev squeals

Sealand
Mushroom

Another arms race in the making

Expect the ad agencies to come up with "ingenious" new ways to bypass ad blockers and the like some time soon.

I blacklist entire "gunslinging" domains using a hosts file on my computer.

I'd like to be able to do that on the phone also. Much more efficient.

http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

Hubble spots Pluto's moons are a chaotic mess of tumbling rock

Sealand
Coat

Re: Or perhaps...

They're eggs allright, but nothing sinister. Pluto is simply spawning.

Half a billion for BLOODY BIG telescope in Chile

Sealand
Thumb Up

You gotta love astronomy

“we can see smaller things, further away than ever before”

"Smaller" = whoppin' big ancient stars that may not even be there by now.

Blows my mind every time I think about it.

Network negotiations nix 2015 Apple TV streaming

Sealand
WTF?

Challenge

"Apple's design gurus are also said to be stumped at the challenge of finding anything exciting to do with an idiot-box ..."

You know, with the seemingly eternal re-runs on almost every channel and mindless overdramatization of most "documentaries" these days, I'm sort of struggling with that myself.

Your CAR is the 'ultimate mobile device', reckons Apple COO

Sealand
Stop

Replace car keys, eh?

Darn - I will need to leave my car unlocked with the ignition on at all times

Samsung to create industry giant via mega merger with itself

Sealand
WTF?

Re: "... integrated premium lifestyle services ..."

BINGO!

No wait - do I need five words?

Sir Jony Ive, chief Apple doodler, promoted – into job he already has

Sealand

No - glitter was abandoned with iOS7

Apple announces 'Home' iOS 9 app to run the Internet of Stuff

Sealand
Big Brother

Re: Toaster with Internet

> Who's going to put bread in it?

That would be the iSlicer (or GSlicer) bread cutting robot, triggered by your smart watch measuring your blood sugar and detecting a low.

Factory reset memory wipe FAILS in 500 MEELLION Android mobes

Sealand
Facepalm

Waiting for Eric Schmidt to step up and say: "That's because you're not resetting it right!" ...

Apple Watch HATES tattoos: Inky pink sinks rinky-dink sensor

Sealand
WTF?

What?

So the gizmo needs access to your blood stream and you need to enter a password to use it? This is clearly not a watch.

Until someone figures out what the hype is about and what the darn thing is really good at - if anything - maybe we should just refer to it as 'Apple What' ...

UK rail signals could be hacked to cause crashes, claims prof

Sealand
Facepalm

To make any safe system hackable, just add a computer.

Duh!

iPhone vs. Galaxy fight hospitalises two after beer bottle stabbing

Sealand
Thumb Down

That's what a flame war looks like IRL.

National Grid's new designer pylon is 'too white and boring' – Pylon Appreciation Society

Sealand
Joke

It's much more difficult to climb the pole-type pylons, so you have to appreciate them from the ground.

That's why true pylon appreciators don't like that design.

ALIENS ARE COMING: Chief NASA boffin in shock warning

Sealand

Who are the aliens anyway?

So when they come, will it be two guys with a flag or a fleet of gunships with lasers ?

Oh, WE are the aliens that are coming? Two guys with a flag, then. And a scoop.

HUGE Aussie asteroid impact sent TREMORS towards the EARTH'S CORE

Sealand
Coat

Re: Devonian?

Whenever I think along the lines of 'no extinction events along the way', I always end up with the vision of a T-rex with a bow tie and a laser gun.

Layla enjoys a Sanskrit makeover: Clapton set to become one of several Gods

Sealand
Angel

Check first

Before posting articles, El Reg's writers should check who's a god and who's not.

"... set to become ..."

Ha!

Intel's cheap and Android's free: Not any more, says TAG Heuer

Sealand
Facepalm

Want to compete, eh?

Well, take any one of your expensive well-proven and succesful chronographs and reduce the battery life to 24 hours.

Done.

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