Posts by David Gosnell

I had a successful interview once, where I commented it had been a while since I'd applied via the job ad in the national press. They denied this, saying they'd found me on a recruitment site, but eventually conceded my story was true. Turned out the newspaper ad was just this kind of thing, published to legally justify the number of foreign contractors they cherrypicked and paid peanuts to. They never even looked at any applications to the newspaper ads. Needless to say this was the least of their issues.

Unity Ads

The main contact I seem to have with Unity is via the somewhat unavoidable (if into casual mobile gaming) Unity Ads, which appears essentially to be a pyramid scheme, whereby the only way apps can afford to advertise as they do is by containing millions of ads themselves, ad nauseam. If they're now also going to have to recoup these insane licensing costs, there really is going to be no functional app left between the ads.

97.6% + 2.4% = 100%

It's almost like the underlying logic might still be correct, but they somehow got a stray negation in the result presentation? Perhaps someone found the "always lie about prime numbers" backdoor?

Disastrous decision

I've never been much of a contributor, but that's perhaps because I've mostly bought older kit where I am more of a consumer of wise advice, and DPReview has always been my top go-to when web searching issues. So gutted to see this announcement, wiping (without even the plan of an official archive) the most definitive resource on the planet, clearly trying to steer customers towards Amazon's unreliable reviews, product info and Q&As and to hell with the collected knowledge of most of the digital photography era.

Did LP actually delete old data, I wonder?

I dumped LP when it was no longer free for cross-device. I just hope they actually deleted my data when I left.

School memory

I remember in an A-level physics lesson the teacher preparing a demonstration of blowing up a capacitor, outside the lab window. Suddenly and unexpectedly there was a flash, bang and large shower of sparks from across the lab. One of the students had jammed a large electrolytic straight into a 240V AC socket. He said he thought there was a 50:50 chance it would be the right way round...

Galaxy generation

I understood that the galaxies were generated based on using the BBC B ROM image as a pseudo-random number generator, and that this was one of the hindrances with releasing it for other contemporary platforms given that the ROM was copyrighted and would need to be redistributed. Not such a problem with later ports, without such constraints on static storage.

Reverse the example images...

... and they could be "before and after" samples for a top plastic surgeon specialising in acid attack victims.

Comic Sans

If I remember rightly, Bob was the original bearer of the delightfully timeless Comic Sans font.

Also pioneered TFA logins (truly f*** all), with invitation to change your password if you'd obviously forgotten it.

Perhaps...

.... we should start treating this global crisis as, well, you know, a global crisis, with a global solution?

As others have commented elsewhere, we (well everyone apart from Boris and his crazy gang) don't give a flying one about having "world-beating" anything, just an end to this damned thing whatever it takes.

At least they HAD an app

No further text.

Visions of a lackey tapping out 50,000,000 messages on his T9 keypad

Messages arrived over the course of at least 4 or 5 hours. Good thing it was just a deadly virus, not a nuclear missile winging its way - even a pretend one like Hawaii had.

6.4?

Curiously, my 6.2 installation isn't even picking up on there being a 6.3 release...

6.4 in fairness is an early-adopter release and as such not generally pushed at users, but surprised not to be offered 6.3 automatically.

Trade spat

This is not, and never has been, about technology and security. It's just a silly trade spat that the orange buffoon expects all his allies to side with him on.

Possible licensing error

As one affected, been keeping close track of this over the last 24 hours. One recurring theme from those chatting with Samsung seems to allude to a possibly expired licensing agreement. Also suggestion of a working patch in 3 to 4 days, in which regard Samsung were rather unhelpful publishing a new support page that (for now) basically echoed the useless advice message on iPlayer itself. But at least Samsung are on the case.

In other words....

Samsung blamed the screen protector until they realised that the same (obviously) happened with their own, not being endowed with magical qualities. What's the betting you could unlock such a phone with a pork chipolata, keeping it clean?

Two pesos (approx 8p)

I remember a charming story when I was little called "Two pesos for Catalina". Half a century on, who'd have thought the title would be so prescient of the worth of what should be a market-leading operating system?

Fat fingers?

Seems to be a bit of an issue with the typo-ridden company, even down to their chosen name.

Error error!

"Musk posted an image of the Moon during a solar eclipse confusingly tagged with the slogan Occupy Mars"

If you're going to point out a glaring error, don't make another one in so doing. Lunar eclipse, that should be.

*checks this post carefully* ;-)