* Posts by Russ T

19 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Aug 2021

The bell tolls for TikTok as lifelines to avoid January 19 US ban vanish

Russ T

Re: Just get shot of it...

Lol. I post everything as AC. And YouTube has amazing, long form, quality content. Documentaries, reviews and so on, filmed and edited professionally.

TikTok appears to have a lot of people desperate to go viral.

So yeah. YouTube > TikTok for sure.

It's not just Big Tech: The UK's Online Safety Act applies across the board

Russ T

Re: Just another example...

"They argued from their very start that they and the internet shouldn't be regulated like the real world because, you know, internet."

I think there are two aspects there.

One is the "evil" stuff, the incessant tracking, selling of data, targeting ads etc. Similar to how TV advertising is regulated, so should the giants.

The other is the "forum-esque" stuff, posts and so on. Most forums have moderators. Of course there are forums for nazis and whatever else in the world. But they are niche. Now, if they all want to give eachother racist hand jobs in their forum, so be it. We all know to avoid the site if there's a swastika on the homepage. However, if they turn up on the cycling forum to do it, that's not OK. In this case moderators would ban them. Or maybe the law would catch up with them.

It feels like most of this stuff is self policing, and the stuff they're trying to stop is already illegal, and the other stuff around kids etc is impossible to police because kids will find a way to access things if they really want.

The whole thing is a mess, and not easy, but blanket laws that capture people just trying to make a little bit of the internet the place where you and your niche interest hang out, how is that in any way a good thing?

Apple drops soldered storage for 2024 Mac Mini

Russ T

Re: "The SSD card is currently a proprietary Apple format"

What's worse is the SSD in the M4 is different to the SSD in the M4 Pro models. Different sizes and position of the connector.

BBS legend Ward Christensen logs off for last time at 78

Russ T

Good memories

A friend of mine came round with his 14.4K US Robotics modem, plugged it into our Acorn A3010 (with no hard drive) and we proceeded to connect to Arcade BBS. We downloaded a game, I think it was simply called !Pigeon. I think the goal was either to crap on, or avoid being crapped on. Anyway, Arcade was my first foray into BBSs.

I'm constantly grateful that I was alive and experienced a golden age of computing, watching these things develop and grow into the sometimes monster/sometimes godsend we now refer to as "the internet". Nostalgia, ahhh.

Apple Intelligence beta lands in iOS 18.1, macOS 15.1 previews

Russ T

Re: “The Mac Pro needs an M2 Ultra processor”

Duh. Of course. I was thinking of the Mac Studio.

Switzerland to end 2024 with an analog FM broadcast-killing bang

Russ T

USA leading the way

The way the US does digital radio is great.

HD Radio - sits alongside the FM band for extra channels

SiriusXM offering a plethora of channels and seems to be mostly ultra reliable.

DAB in the UK by comparison is pretty awful.

Also: “also eliminate maintenance costs of aging FM infrastructure”. Really? FM transmission is far easier than digital. Power argument; yes. Maintenance? I’m not buying it.

Engine cover flies from Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 during takeoff

Russ T

Re: Shared on social media ??? WTF ???

This is the "emergency" landing being filmed. You can tell by the position of the flaps.

Chrome for Windows-Arm laptops officially lands in time for Snapdragon X Elite kit

Russ T

Edge is better than Chrome, though.

It sips memory compared to Chrome, and power too.

Dare I say it, MS made a half decent product.

London's famous BT Tower will become a hotel after £275M sale

Russ T

Re: Dont know how to use the wayback macine but...

https://360gigapixels.com/london-320-gigapixel-panorama/

Or better:

https://www.360cities.net/image/bt-tower-test-gigapixel-panorama-london/vr

Scared of flying? Good news! Software glitches keep aircraft on the ground

Russ T

Re: Hmmm...

I wonder if the two identically named waypoints hadn't been in the same flight plan before, but since planes have been re-routing around Russian air space, this was a first occurrence?

Will Flatpak and Snap replace desktop Linux native apps?

Russ T

Re: No.

I would argue that docker containers are specialised and built for the purpose of maximising virtualisation resources.

These FlatSnaps sounds more like virtualising something because it's the only way to standardise it, and actually overuses resources unnecessarily.

Red Hat layoffs spark calls to unionize, CEO wades in

Russ T

Re: American way

Clearly they've figured out that they don't, they only need 18,200ish ;)

The end of Microsoft-brand peripherals is only Surface deep

Russ T

One of the first general available optical mice

I know optical mice had been around for ages with special grid mouse mats, but MS released one of the first generally available optical "Intellimouse" products. I remember parting with my hard earned £80 in Dixons back in, I want to say 99/00 when £80 was a lot of money to me. It was brilliant - USB, but came with a PS/2 adapter (one of those green ones we all ended up with a pile of). And ... I still have it. When I need a wired mouse when building a PC or some such, it plugs in and just works.

Musicians threaten to make Oasis 'Live Forever' with AI

Russ T

What drivel

Sure the Gallagher brothers might be a couple of knobs but Oasis were massive and made some great records. Wish there were more of their ilk in the charts these days rather than the whiny 5 person collabs that seem to be in fashion these days.

California to try tackling drought with canal-top solar panels

Russ T

372 miles

By my rough calculations that's how many miles they'd need to cover to generate 1.21 Gigawatts.

RISC OS: 35-year-old original Arm operating system is alive and well

Russ T

My original and best <3

Ahh the memories ...

I started school in the late 80s when BBCs and Acorns were the stalwart of school computing. I became something of an "expert" - I was the computer monitor, setting people up with floppy disks, messing with settings etc. Later we got an A3010 at home (2MB RAM, no HDD) and I learned to code in BASIC, writing/hacking WIMP programs, messing with SWIs and modules. My friend brought round a modem and we connected to Arcade BBS and downloaded a game which was beyond comprehension at the time. At secondary school I'd have many arguments with PC advocates about how much better Acorns were (Windows 3.11 was still the PC game in town) and I was obsessive to a fault.

In my late teens as schools abandoned this kit, I used to post on education newsgroups offering to "clear out" their old computers and make a donation to school funds which they were happy to accept (now this is a very common business model for companies needing old kit clearing out). At one point I had 20 RiscPCs, I removed all the podules and network interfaces and sold them on eBay to enthusiasts, and then sold the remaining computers to an Acorn dealer for several more times than I'd paid for all the kit in the first place. At 17 years old this was eye-watering money.

Also during that time I got my hands on a BBC Doomsday setup. It didn't work (laser disc player issue), but I had remembered using it at school in the library and being mesmerised by walking around a virtual town (as per Google Maps today). I wish I had kept hold of it. I actually had the two laserdiscs, immaculate in original packaging. Imagine that. That system was unbelievably impressive, given the hardware available and how they made it work.

Later (1999) I moved into the world of the internet/WWW which became my bread and butter, learning Linux and HTML and so on, and now I work on a cloud software platform. But those BBC and Acorn days set me up for a lifetime of success and I had a lot of fun (and made some good money) along the way. I'm grateful to the teachers who saw my passion/aptitude for computers and gave me after school access and privileges afforded to few others, and to those who hired me straight out of school at 16 so I could work at my passion.

In my latter teenage years and early twenties I managed to convert myself from a full on nerd to something more of a geek, forcing myself to learn social skills resulting in my time becoming more full of distractions like women and exercise and all that boring stuff rather than quite so much tinkering and late nights in front of a VDU. But some part of me still dreams of a room full of all this old kit, if only just to reminisce, and I can't help but get excited once in a while figuring out a solution to something using a Pi or Arduino and so on. Inner nerds truly never die.

God bless you Acorn and RISC OS. In many ways you were ahead of your time and were "beaten" by an inferior Wintel product. I won't lie, it warms my heart that today I am writing this on an M1 Pro Mac ... a fitting full circle.

We take Asahi Linux alpha for a spin on an M1 Mac Mini

Russ T

Re: It works until it is blocked

Apple don’t care what software you run on their computers because you already forked over your $$$ and they aren’t as reliant on App Store income on macOS like iOS.

What they don’t like is you running macOS on non-Apple hardware as then they make $0.

Whilst they might not actively help a Linux development on their hardware, they won’t cry any tears if you choose to buy an Apple device to run another OS on. I know they certainly would have made a few laptop sales in the past for Windows customers because of the battery and build quality etc.

5nm? Pah. Texas Instruments focuses on 45nm+ analog, embedded electronics – and makes bank

Russ T

Re: TI has got a very strong, if somewhat ecletic, portfolio

I’d argue working on devices such as Arduinos, Pi hats, PoKeys type devices etc could be seen as a good entry to working with TI type devices.

Sure, the architectures and languages might be different, but gaining the understanding of how analog inputs, measures and so forth work is a good step away from mobile apps where you only focus on user inputs.

Come fly with me. But first we need to find a boot device

Russ T

What's the best way to submit bork submissions?

I have a few from a trip earlier this year :)