oldcynic

18 ms·

121.
by oldcynic 8y ago
Old fogies like myself will remember that France, and much of Europe, used to require yellow headlights. The idea being that the removal of blue light reduces the likelihood of dazzle, especially in rain and fog. https://en.wikip
122.
by oldcynic 8y ago
I'm sure there were some, and I'm not saying never but as I was the one usually asked to help fix friends and family I'd like to think I'd catch local ones. Usually the AV trigger on cracks were one of the generic catche
123.
by oldcynic 8y ago
Thank you! Web search for WSJ bypass has been mostly failing lately. Downvoting you for being helpful is a bit uncharitable, +1
124.
by oldcynic 8y ago
Game developers seemed to be swapping just as many floppies as everyone else. With the added advantage they often had stuff you weren't otherwise going to come across. Later when I was buying everything the first thing I'd do was
125.
by oldcynic 8y ago
Yes has happened to me and several friends from Amazon UK. If it's a suspect category I'll try and buy direct or another retailer to avoid the hassle of returns. UK & EU law places the legal liability on the retailer not the
126.
by oldcynic 8y ago
As far as ordering is concerned they are the same. How Amazon handle within a warehouse or across multiple doesn't change the effect to consumers: If FakeCo send 200 fake headphones to Amazon, co mingle, and Amazon have 800 genuine hea
127.
by oldcynic 8y ago
You can only trust "shipped and sold by Amazon" if you can be certain they are not using inventory co-mingling. Basically everyone's inventory for the same product are thrown into the same warehouse storage bin, so when you b
128.
by oldcynic 8y ago
> I hope that signs and signals can most fade away. Imagine walking through a city without street signs or advertisements or stoplights Will that get us a Black Mirror episode where no door or amenity will function until you put the lens
129.
by oldcynic 8y ago
I think VR is forever destined to be a niche sideline. Seems like I've been hearing that VR is about to take off every few years since the 90s. It resolutely fails to do so and aside from some "wow" at tech demos and games th
130.
by oldcynic 8y ago
No, it really doesn't. It's pulp fiction fantasy. I read it when it came out and I enjoyed it - as fiction. I like alternative histories - I've read many. I enjoyed the novel SS-GB 30 years ago far more, it was far more cre
131.
by oldcynic 8y ago
Don't forget Churchill's Operation Unthinkable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable
132.
by oldcynic 8y ago
Quite the attack based on few facts. Personally responsible? The war cabinet rejected requests for food aid when Mountbatten requested them. The cabinet was far more than just Churchill as would be seen from released Cabinet papers. You can
133.
by oldcynic 8y ago
Equally the history of why we have /bin /sbin and /usr/bin. Lack of disk space. When the OS got too big for a single disk and expanded to a second the split came about. /home came about when they expanded to a third
134.
by oldcynic 8y ago
Most of my early career was Unix, with just a little DOS and Windows thrown in (enough to persuade me to keep trying to avoid it). Unix was mature even then. There is NO WAY you would have convinced me that 30 years later I'd still be
135.
by oldcynic 8y ago
I'm baffled too. Then again the largest company I've run had tens of people. Things change as you get bigger. :) I am a bit surprised that they can figure out an iMac Pro apparently quite quickly but only after all the bad press a
136.
by oldcynic 8y ago
I think you;re missing the point. Not being cynical or semantically pure. Least ways I don't think so. Nothing wrong with drinking buddies or casual friends at the local cycling club or wherever your hobby interests lie. But they won&#
137.
by oldcynic 8y ago
I've had an all day test of a car with adaptive cruise (Volvo). I didn't like it - it tended to hunt like someone a bit vague was driving. It worked well if others had their speed nailed as if on cruise control too. Concluded I&#x
138.
by oldcynic 8y ago
Some parts of the EU are not democratically elected. Neither is the Civil Service in the UK and other nations. Even if the Civil Service or Council of Europe propose legislation it still requires vote by the relevant parliament to be adopte
139.
by oldcynic 8y ago
> Criticism shared with non-engineers amounts to second-guessing and degrades the trust of the public in the profession as a whole, which has tangible negative outcomes for everyone. Also makes it ever so easy to bury the negligence and
140.
by oldcynic 8y ago
Seems like EU MEPs are just as vulnerable to lobbying by big business as elected politicians everywhere else. Not sure how that makes it not a democracy. That most Europeans have little idea what's going on is a reflection of the almos
141.
by oldcynic 8y ago
A friend of mine spent a very lucrative few years in the late 90s, early 00s doing Excel contracting. Usually for banks who seemed to have quite a lot of these monstrous abominations and a wish to make them far more monstrous going by conve
142.
by oldcynic 8y ago
This is when retouching involved a brush and an artist. They might have done it electronically, but... For artificial scan effects like the Earthrise photo, make an acetate overlay before some good old fashioned dark room dodge and burn mak
143.
by oldcynic 8y ago
> You don't make friends at job The more general variation on this theme is : "Most of your friends aren't". They're drinking buddies, folks to talk to at $event and $hobby_club If shit meets fan most of them wil
144.
by oldcynic 8y ago
I would guess a development of Corona, the earliest spy satellites. Those earliest spy satellites were essentially disposable cameras. When full they dropped the film to be caught in mid air by the air force. (A fascinating wiki hole - you
145.
by oldcynic 8y ago
My preferred sanity check was the FT but sadly they stopped letting you read a few pieces free a month. Since the Telegraph remade themselves downmarket behind a paywall the only other I can think of is Reuters. Reuters' coverage of en
146.
by oldcynic 8y ago
Careful here. Anecdotally I'm aware of more than a few folks who replaced their bottom end PC/Windows laptop with a brand new machine because it was supplied with far too little memory, but hit a £399 or £499 price point, and they
147.
by oldcynic 8y ago
+lose/losing I think they've lost many of them already aside from those who need to stay on MacOS because that or iOS is what they're writing for. Hence the tone of so many of these articles. How long are the rest going to
148.
by oldcynic 8y ago
A Mini would be useful here right now. No way I'm buying effectively a 5 year old machine with soldered RAM. Especially when I see what Intel are offering. Which means they're way overpriced second hand on eBay too. There's s
149.
by oldcynic 8y ago
I often run in DND, with some of my contact list set to bypass DND and notifications off for nearly every app. That combined with notifications set to repeat on messages (like old feature phones used to) means I'll get a few pings from
150.
by oldcynic 8y ago
That explanation hasn't exactly died out these days even if you won't find it in official sources.

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