Posts by I could be a dog really

Raspberry Pi 500 and monitor arrive in time for Christmas

Re: Keyboard layout

Years ago we had the local Apple dealership. We had a customer with a French keyboard. IIRC we also had customers with German and a couple of other languages.

The keyboard was just the start of it, the menus were all localised as well - lets see, though it's been decades, I still vaguely recall that save was fichier, and print was imprimateur (or something like that). German was fun as the menus expanded so much in width that they could go off the end of a small screen. We got CD's from Apple with all the localised versions of Mac OS on - so sometimes we'd try them out ... just because they were there. Japanese was cute, they replaced the multi-colour (if you had a colour monitor) Apple logo with a Mount Fuji.

The fun bit was seeing where localisation didn't work. It seemed that most of them had most of the menu items in the localised language, but with odd US-English ones. This was most pronounced in kana based languages like Japanese, where you have a menu full of what looked to us like squiggles with a few English words tossed in and looking very out of place.

And one place I later worked at, we did actually buy a language kit for one user who sometimes worked in (IIRC) Japanese - it came with a sheet of sticky labels to add to the standard keyboard.

Panic at the Cisco tech, thanks to ancient IOS syntax helper that outsmarted itself

As I've mentioned above, the article doesn't really tell the whole truth. IOS was (at least, last time I worked with it) very intuitive for a lot of stuff. You wouldn't try to reverse a "shut" (short for shutdown) with "open", you'd use "no shut" where "no" means reverse the command that follows.

Dunno what new-fangled illogical stuff it has these days if people are thinking that "open" is the reverse of "shutdown".

Re: Pedant

And of course, it works for longer keywords too - so more key presses saved. And most decent shells on Linux (and I assume other Unixen) does much the same thing to some extent or other.

Working entirely from age addled memory ...

conf t => configure terminal

int fa0/1 => interface FastEthernet 0/1

addr => address

no shut => no shutdown

and then when you're done ...

wr mem => write memory

So you see "sh" vs "show" isn't a good example of how many keystrokes (and opportunities for typos) you can save with autocomplete. Of course, if you are sure of what you are typing then you don't bother with the tab (so saving a keypress), otherwise press tab and see the full command.

Re: I guess it had to be Sherlock...

"No shut = open" verges on Newspeak double plus ungood

Only because the article is ... to stay polite ... missing a few nuances.

Firstly, I'd say that Sherlock must have been a bit of a noob, or he's only used newer kit that I used to play with. But in ISO speak, "no" simply means the reverse of whatever follows it. So "no shutdown" is not the same as "open", it literally means no shutdown, i.e. the opposite of shutdown. It can be used in many commands, so the command to remove an IP address from an interface is exactly "no" followed by the same command that created it (though there are some nuances with primary & secondary IP addresses), the command to remove an NTP server is "no" followed by the command that added it, and so on.

Personally, I got on (mostly) fine with IOS. What did get me was when they started shipping kit with a Cisco badge on, which wasn't actually Cisco but some other outfit (who's name I forget now) they'd bought which came with "looks like IOS but isn't the same" command line syntax. I also worked with some HP kit (back when HP was good) which had a very similar CLI. And other kit I don't recall now - it was several work hats ago since I did all that.

I guess it's a mindset thing. I'm autistic, and TBH found the very logical CLI in things like IOS fairly easy to work with - as an aside, I also really liked Forth and it's use of RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) which removes the need for braces, rules of precedence, etc. (I'm sure some people will flinch when BODMAS is mentioned) when doing maths.

Boeing busted by employee over plans to surveil workers, quickly reverses course

Re: "blurry photos"

I suspect the idea is to be able to do "X% of desks were occupied for Y% of the time" sort of reporting. PIRs will simply tell you that an area of the office had people move through it - it's notable that in our office, some area will go dark in quieter times, but the lights come on when someone goes to get something from the printer.

With the right sort of algoithms, the system could determine how many desks were occupied. A very useful metric for the business would be "on what % of days do we exceed Y% occupancy, what's the number of Z%, etc." If you have an office where you rarely have 50% of the desks in use on any day, then arguably you have too much office space. But if you have >90% regularly, then you might not have enough. This camera system probably tells you that, PIRs can't.

CrowdStrike still doesn't know how much its Falcon flame-out will cost

TBH it's not a market I've been following, but isn't there a parallel with the Windows/MS Office/365 malarky ?

To say that people buy into the MS stuff because they like it is probably a bit wide of the mark. As a user, I ****ing hate the stuff I'm afflicted with at work. But, however many floating pieces of excrement there are under the surface, they are all polished enough that the people who make the decisions thing it looks and works nicely, and because MS have done so well in their (often illegal) efforts to exclude any viable competition, there is realistically no other option* for most businesses. So people buy into the MS ecosystem, which further entrenches the MS ecosystem, which means people have to buy into ...

I suspect Cloudstrike is in a similar position where there's little competition in at least some parts - so unless you want piecemeal protection with all the management overhead that entails, then you just stump up for "the market leader". You might hate them, but the pain of doing something else is more.

* I'm a fan of FOSS, I use FOSS, no, there is no practical alternative for most businesses that comes anywhere near replacing the MS ecosystem. You could replace some small bits, but MS have cleverly gaffer tapes stuff together well enough that replacing any individual part would be painful. We nearly had commercial competitors, but MS made sure to kill them off decades ago.

Re: "customers can't find a better security product"

Also in dire tme, it's easer to cull a WhateveraaS by not renewing the contract than getting rd of some hardware...

Two things there :

1) Not renewing the contract for WhateveraaS (I like that word BTW !) means that Whatever stops working. If that is a key thing your business needs in order to run then not paying to renew the contract means your business dies. And as we've been warning for some time, and seen reports from various quarters confirming, once you are into WhateveraaS then most likely the supplier of WhateveraaS is not going to make it easy to up sticks and move it somewhere else (such as back on-prem when you realise that could be cheaper). From various reports I've read, it seems that cloud vendors tend to give you about 3 years to get properly locked in - and then the rates start to rise once they know it's going to be sufficiently painful for you to tell them where to stick their price rises.

2) Typically, getting rid of some hardware isn't going to save you anything (apart from a bit off the lecky). You've already paid for it, which also means that instead of replacing it automatically when it's 3 years old, you can just keep using it for a bit longer - i.e. spread the cost over more time and thus reduce the cost of running something on-prem. Yes I know there are good reasons for hardware refreshes, but unlike your WhateveraaS which stops working if you stop feeding it cash, the on-prem option just keeps working as long as you feed it lecky. As an side, with a previous work hat on, I was deploying hand-me-down hardware which as one of my colleagues put it was "6 years past it's refresh date" !

As others have stated elsewhere, on-prem can be cheaper than cloud. That is going to be dependent on the business, it's workloads, what software it used, how big it is (as in, does employing specialists to keep it running make sense or do you have to outsource that), yada, yada, yada. Logically, if you go cloud then you are using a computer someone else bought, running on lecky (and other costs such as lecky for the cooling) that someone else pays for, and that someone else will want you to pay your share plus their profit margin. OK, for a smaller business it makes sense to pay for a small share of all those because running them yourself would be a bit expensive; but for a large business it's a different situation.

And don't get me started on "so where does my data (which is subject to GDPR and the like) actually live, and who actually has access to it ?"

Why Google's Chrome monopoly won't crack anytime soon

Re: Google Monopoly?

And it's not like people weren't warning about where MS was heading ... ooh ... decades ago.

FTC urges smart device makers to disclose software update lifecycles

Re: How about mandatory software updates?

That would be really hard to mandate - would it really be reasonable to mandate (say) 6 years of updates to something intended as a cheap disposable item ? Similarly, would only (say) 6 years be sufficient for an expensive home automation system ?

Better to make the manufacturer state the support length, then the buyer can decide if that suits their needs. If I want something cheap that I know I'll only use for a short while, I'd have that option; but if it's something I need to work for a long time (e.g. I'd not buy any home automation stuff which wasn't guaranteed to work for at least a decade) then I can weed out the cheap c**p.

Of course it needs to be enforced, and really it needs to be a strict liability - i.e. just failing to meet the stated time should be enough for the buyer to win, not have the buyer have to show that the manufacturer's excuses are not reasonable. In the UK it would also need changes to other rules if we were to have one like this - otherwise, get to 6 years in England and Wales, 5 years in Scotland (dunno about NI), and the buyer is time barred from any claim against the supplier under out statute of limitations laws.

I see a further issue. How many devices these days do not include software from a third party ? For example, I recall reading of a security flaw in some DVR software - and it affected dozens of brands who all built commodity hardware and bought in the software from one (Chinese ?) source. The manufacturer could have a back-back contractual arrangement with their upstream supplier(s) - but what if an upstream supplier fails to uphold it ? Leaves the manufacturer legally required to support a product, but they can't effectively enforce that on their suppliers.

And of course, there's an XKCD that seems appropriate here.

Re: Updates

The whole point is that under US law, the manufacturer is required to say how long you get updates for, and how long any required services (e.g. "the phone home or it doesn't work" servers) will be kept running. That way, the buyer knows how long (or short) the devices life might be and can choose accordingly. If this were made readily available, then hopefully people might think along the lines of "I can spend $200 for something guaranteed to work for 10 years, or £150 for something that could crap out next week - perhaps it's worth spending the extra". That will put pressure on manufacturers to provide meaningful support guarantees.

Yes, we know a lot of buyers won't even look at such things, but I think enough will start doing once bitten by "sorry, you're expensive [something] doesn't work now" problem.

Re: I've been burnt - thank you samsung

We have a second hand Samsung TV and it's still working just fine. Though I note from my server logs that it's really insistent on trying to change it's IP address regularly even though my DHCP server is configured to only let it have the one fixed address I've allocated - I think this is behind the intermittent "no network" messages when opening an app.

On the other hand, the JVC one we bought new is "poor". It runs Android TV and we find the UI is just a pile of manure. Apart from being slow and laggy (too little processing capacity for the workload I guess), it's really not very intuitive, it's been needing reboots every so often when things stop working correctly, and it's clear the UI was designed by someone with a massive display sat next to them on the desk as it's not readable on a 43" model across the living room. Trouble is, these are rather nebulous "faults" which didn't appear for a bit and I just c.b.a. arguing with the retailer over a return outside of their no questions asked period. I won't ever be considering either a JVC or Android TV ever again.

Mind you, given the option I wouldn't buy ANY "smart" TV if I could avoid it - as other have said, easier to plug in a "smart" something (we have a FireTV in another room) that's cheaper to bin and replace if it goes out of support and stops working. And a non-smart TV is so much easier to use for everything but the "smart" stuff we don't use all that much.

Network engineer chose humiliation over a night on the datacenter floor

In reality, such places should not exist without some means of escape - such as an alarmed emergency exit.

Think about it, the network has gone due because <something> is on fire, and now you can't escape from the conflagrating building. I imagine that being stuck in such a place while the temperature rises and the air slowly fills with smoke is not a pleasant way to die ... over a period of perhaps an hour or two to contemplate your demise.

DoJ wants Google to sell off Chrome and ban it from paying to be search default

Re: As if when Apple can't pay for Google they don't compete

In these sorts of cases, it's rare that you can ask for a judgement against "a market". The market is there, but certain players have distorted it (mostly by unfair means) to their benefit and to the detriment of the users. So judgements are made against those people/businesses as and when such activities are seen.

But as is so often the case, this is too little, too late as much of the damage has already been done, and will continue to be done for the next few years (allowing for the inevitable appeals etc.) Not to mention, as noted above, come January, "the best government policies money can buy" will come into play and such regulator imposed annoyances are likely to disappear.

Put your usernames and passwords in your will, advises Japan's government

Re: Why would I care about passwords ?

So you really hate your relatives who will have to deal with this mess when you're gone (or become incapable - see above about having a stroke, getting dementia, etc.) ?

Japan looks to nuclear energy to power AI-powered datacenter boom

How much was cleaning up nuclear, and how much was cleaning up all the other contaminations - oil, chemicals, salt, decaying human and animal tissues, etc., etc., etc. ?

Of course, if you think other sources of power are better, then please feel free to put forward rational arguments for them.

Fossil fuel: socialises the costs through CO₂ emissions, along with all the other pollutants. Not to mention the costs from being reliant on other countries for your supplies - see how Germany's dependence on cheap Russian oil and gas worked out for them over the last 2-3 years !

Wind (& solar): socialises massive costs that I find most eco-zealots prefer to ignore. Given the intermittency, not to mention (for us, dunno if Asia experiences them) Dunkelflautes, there are massive costs put onto everyone to deal with that: Providing backup generation and/or storage (see Dunkelflaute - storage to cover those is impractical) is massively expensive which loads up everyone's energy bills. Alternatively, you engage in demand side management which for domestic customers causes "significant" costs (c.f. the debate over the value for money of our smart meter rollout) and for industrial customers typically means re-engineering their processes or just shutting down at peak times - how you feel if your employer told you that you were being laid off (without pay*) for a few days as there's no lecky ?

* Either the employer doesn't pay you, so it costs you in your pay packet, or they do pay you, but then go out of business as their prices have to go up and others with more reliable lecky steal their customers.

UK energy watchdog slaps down Capita's £130M smart meter splurge

Re: "Meters that allow you to do that sort of thing have existed for at least 40 years. "

I could have any color thick-wire Ethernet I wanted, as long as it was yellow. Got a bit expensive special ordering plenum rated cables, but avoided potential issues with minions getting their vampire on and tapping into the wrong LAN

Now you are showing your age. It was (just) before my time, thin ethernet (a.k.a. 10base2) had taken over in the sort of businesses I worked with back then.

But hook solar to a well insulated hot water cylinder and consumers get 'free' hot water

Yes indeed. And roll on a few years, a lot of people are going to be scratching their heads where the **** to put a HW cylinder in their modern shoeboxes designed on the basis that a combi gas boiler is the best thing since sliced bread.

I grew up in a home with a hot water cylinder, which was in an airing cupboard. Which also doubled up as a warm place to let yeast do it's thing for bread and beer making.

And also good for keeping things like towels nicely dry.

Currently though, hot water cylinders are consider 'inefficient' because they 'waste heat'.. But only if you let that go to waste. Otherwise any heat is just going to escape into a home, and warm it.

Absolutely. Not only that, but combi boilers have their own inefficiencies. For example, some can take ages to get hot water out from cold - hence the availability of devices like Combisave which is a thermostatic valve to restrict water flow until it reaches a certain temperature, which avoids the usual situation where the occupant runs the hot tap at high flow to waste a lot of water and a lot of heat while the boiler takes ages to get up to full temperature (it takes longer if you draw all the heat out running the "not hot yet" hot tap direct to the drain).

We have a couple of rental properties. 14 years ago now I fitted a thermal store in one of them, and while it was empty I was able to do some measurements by running it off the immersion heater for a few days and take lecky readings to see how much energy was being used. Even though it's in an unheated garage under the flat, it's standing losses are just 80W - I built an insulated cupboard around it. Around the same time I bought the property next door which still has a combi boiler. In "ECO mode" it goes cold and can take a full minute to supply anything even resembling warm water. With ECO mode off, it's standing losses were around 160W - based on gas meter readings over a few days and converting using the calorific values given on the bill. OK, to that mostly still goes into the property, but it's still higher losses than my "inefficient" thermal store. And the thermal store also runs the heating - so the boiler doesn't have to sit there short cycling for many hours/day.

Re: No mention of 2G....Why Not?

And you've missed out that even for those meters that actually work, and don't rely on a network due to be axed in the coming years, and ... The actual service life for them is significantly shorter (10 years vs 20 years, but I could be wrong), so the actual costs of the meters is higher due to the need for more frequent replacement.

Re: No real statistics

She also doesn't like the machine running at night since the vibrations from the spin cycle resonate up through the floor.

I must get some microwave popcorn in, I think it's going to be "interesting" when the first cases hit the courts.

We've got the fire services and the government telling us not to use tumble driers (and other appliances) when not around to put out the fires - and another bit of government tells us to run tumble driers (and other appliances) at night when we're asleep. So when do we get the first court case when someone died because they followed government instructions (the latter, not the sensible former) ?

We're lucky in that we can't hear or feel our neighbour's machines, and I'm pretty certain they can't hear/feel ours, but as I write this I can hear that our washing machine (different floor, opposite end of the house) is on a spin cycle. If I were in (say) a flat and a neighbour disrupted my sleep with a spin cycle or tumble dry then I'd be telling them to stop, then telling them in "unequivocal terms" to stop, and if necessary going for an injunction. Given how many people live in close packed terraces and flats, I can see this becoming a serious problem.

Re: The real reason the UK government wants smart meters

Oh there is a choice

There won't be. The choice will be to have a smart meter that's been configured to dumb mode, or no supply at all. They aren't buying any non-smart meters, so if you long after a good old reliable Ferraris disk meter, you won't be getting one.

And of course we'll need to trust them when they say they'll pinky swear they won't switch it back to smart mode either deliberately or "accidentally".

The CCJ is trivial - simply one of a thousand entries on a spreadsheet, all of which OVO will swear under oath during a phone call are persistent non-payers who've refused all attempts to manage the situation, and the judge will rubber stamp them and OVO have the warrant. Then they can come and break into your house to change the meter - or just switch you to pre-pay without notice leaving you with no lecky at all as you won't be able to apply any credit to the meter that is registered against someone else.

I would be sending letters by registered (or at least recorded) post to their registered company address, and marked for the attention of the chief executive. Set out the problem and the attempts you've made to fix it. Make sure you keep your copy, and proof of delivery (I've noticed Royal Mail only seem to keep it online for a few months). That way, if (or as seems more likely, when) the brown stuff hits the fan, you can show that you have done all you can to deal with the problem. Courts take a dim view of big organisations that go out of their way to not fix problems even when the customer (or in this case, innocent victim) has tried hard to deal with it.

Re: "Meters that allow you to do that sort of thing have existed for at least 40 years. "

You can use red cables, there is no regulation requiring grey. It's just that grey is what nearly all such cables come in - and economies of scale mean that other colours are more expensive (and may even be special order).

I agree the bit about using a commercial panel which doesn't meet the BS to be a "consumer unit" is an issue. However, nothing to stop you having a compliant CU for the basic power distribution, and mounting a second box directly above/below/to the side of it to house control gear (relays etc.) to switch the circuits after they've left the CU. In fact, that's how I'd do it - I wouldn't want the hassle of mixing bus-bar fed distribution devices with non-bus-bar switching devices, two much hassle with all the individual wires that would inevitably by passing the sharp edges of the bus bars. Of course, switching at the load end removes that issue, but is less desirable with increasing load counts (but then we don't have lots of night storage heaters these days). In any case, apart from things like the immersion heater, a lot is now going to "smart" localised control anyway.

AIUI, "smart" meters should be able to signal to connected devices via the HAN. But I'm not aware of anyone doing it. As I've mentioned in another post, Octopus don't even use the smart meter for control in their smart tariffs - the electricity cost information is send out via the internet the day before, and people have put together systems to use it internally with IFTTT.

It doesn't, and doesn't need to, use any form of communications signal for that ! Some (most ? all ?) chargers have the option of putting a simple current clamp round the meter tail so it can measure the current you are pulling from the mains. Tell it what you main fuse rating is (or any other limit) and it can manage things itself - if drawn current is above the threshold, reduce charging power.

Of course, if you want to maximise utility of a combined solar PV/battery/EV charger setup then it's a bit more complicated as the charger will need to communicate with the solar/battery manager to determine the optimum time and charge rate.

For good measure, communicating with the meter isn't even needed (or indeed used) to optimise against electricity cost - and IIRC the spec inconveniently left out the functionality to do this properly ! With things like Octopus's smart tariffs, the actual per-unit cost is provided via the internet in advance (the day before, for the full 48 charge periods of each day). So all the "smart" meter needs to do is totalise the usage at each price point - it doesn't need to record nearly 1500 readings per month, they don't need to transfer all these to a massive database and store it all for goodness knows how long. All they need is a total for each price for each billing period - and that could be done decades ago with mechanical meters (OK, only 2, or sometimes 3, charge rates with "Economy 7" and similar schemes).

Re: Dear Smart Meter Zealots: Explain why they all have a remote controlled "disable supply"

And disabling the gas meter in an emergency can be done by ... drum roll ... just turning off the valve that's next to it.

Using the meter's inbuilt facility just isn't going to happen. Just think of the bureaucracy needed to allow (say) the fire service to get in touch with the metering people, give them the details, and have the metering people reliably turn off the correct supply ! Now add in additional bureaucracy to make sure that ONLY the right people (e.g. fire service) can do this to prevent "mischievous" people* having their neighbours turned off ... after all, some of our US cousins think it's OK to SWAT people.

The ONLY valid reason for a remote disconnect on a gas meter is for credit purposes - i.e. to remove the need to physically send a team round to disconnect a supply or fit a pre-payment meter when it can be so much more easily done by getting a judge to rubber stamp a few hundred warrants with a phone call and then just turn them off without notice. Before "smart" meters, they at least had to break in to do it.

It's a bit more nuanced with electricity. With gas, the meter can only disconnect the supply, it must be manually turned back on for safety reasons. Arguably that should apply to electricity as well, but it doesn't. So apart from not paying the bills, the function of the remote disconnect is so that when (yes, I chose "when" rather than "if") we find ourselves in a situation where generation capacity is lacking**, demand reduction by price rationing (a.k.a. surge pricing, putting the per-unit price up to something eye-watering) hasn't persuaded enough people to sit in the dark without any heating or hot food or drinks, then they can implement rolling blackouts like some of us will remember from the 70s.

* In my youth, I was perhaps a bit mischievous. In our village we didn't have mains gas, so all the houses had outside oil tanks. And each tank had a valve on it before the pipework. And some of those tanks/valves were so temprtingly handy to the public highway. And sometimes I'd be walking home at night when it was dark. I think you can guess the rest. I noticed on had it's handle removed on the third visit !

** Like when another dunkelflaute comes along, but we've no longer got enough nuclear, gas, and coal(strike that, we've just shut down the last of our coal stations) power stations to keep the lights on. Looking at Gridwatch, over the last few days, wind had been dropping below 2GW for significant periods - against an installed capacity of at least 30GW.

That hardware will be more reliable if you stop stabbing it all day

That reminds me of a case in school - doing a control technology class.

The (paper based) problem was to design a traffic light control system - and the instructions said something like the green phase should be 20 seconds in light traffic or 30 seconds in heavy traffic. So to meet the laid down criteria, I had drawn a box labelled "computer" and it had inputs from traffic sensors. Oh how I'd love to be able to go back in time and tell myself to have a bit more conviction and say what I wanted to say when my solution was declared over complicated. You see, my solution actually implemented what the problem statement required - while the teachers stated method of "we just use a cam switch driven by a motor" didn't.

OK, he could have had traffic sensors that introduced a 10 second stop on the cam motor under heavy traffic, but he didn't.

Also, as I now know, setting up a complex cam switch (for a simple crossroads it's six channels to switch) with precise timing is "tricky".

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

Re: Multi-Fail

Ah that takes me back. My first car, a Mk II Spitfire - as you say, a delight to work on in terms of access to stuff. Just a pity about their "interesting" handling where cornering would change from "all's fine here" to "why am I facing the wrong way" in what seems like a negative period of time and no intermediate steps. They were awesome for autotests though.

UK government plays power broker with small modular reactor suitors

Re: Hmm

Without mentioning that being intermittent they also have to pay for the costs of their back-up power stations

Err, a correction there. The intermittent generators don't pay for the externalities such as backup capacity - WE pay for that, along with giving the intermittent generators rather poor contracts that mean they get paid even when they aren't needed.

Re: Energy Security

The idea is to have more than one reactor at a site.

The two key factors with SMRs are the "small" (as in, can be made in a factory and transported to site) and "modular". So, some civils will be different for each site, but once the base is designed, the actual module housings etc. will be "build, step, repeat, ... move to new site, build, step, repeat, ...) - and then the reactor modules can be brought from the factory and "dropped in" a bit like popping a new PP3 battery into your radio.

Given that there will need to be "significant" costs (such as security) which will be nearly the same whether you have one reactor or ten, it will make sense to put multiple modules on one site.

Re: Energy Security

you only need to supplement renewables for a couple of months a year for electricity production, which would make the marginal cost per kWh of nuclear astronomic for new power stations

I imagine you didn't intend to completely undermine your own argument like that.

Reality is that with renewables, for "a couple of months of the year" people have to switch off/factories have to shut down/people die from hypothermia - or you have an alternative. The cheapest alternative is gas, which is made very much more expensive by only having a low duty cycle, and emits CO₂ which of course we are trying to stop emitting. The obvious option is nuclear which is as close to reliable low carbon energy as we are going to get to, and then turn them down a bit along with turning off some of the renewables when there's too much lecky. But, due to the way the contracts have been done, we actually have to pay renewable operators to turn off instead of them just having to suck up a lower rate of return like other operators have to.

Longer term, it would be good if we could get to a point where there is a surplus of zero-carbon lecky - and then use electrolysis to make hydrogen which has many uses (such as reacting it with CO₂ to make hydrocarbons such as synthetic liquid fuels and hence decarbonise applications where liquid hydrocarbon fuels really are the most logical energy supply).

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

Re: Doh..

I see your Mazda 6 and raise you a VW Golf (of around 1990s vintage IIRC) that work had as a pool car. Being known as the person everyone goes to with any sort of technical issue, I got asked about spare bulbs and "shouldn't we have some spares" - so I gave someone a list and sent them to the nearest car parts shop for them. I think one tail light was out which had prompted the question.

While I was swapping that - nice easy job, but for the seam on the fuel tank designed to just-n-so prevent removal of the lamp holder assembly from the housing/lens unit _ took a look at what other delights the manufacturer might have thrown in.

Headlights. Hmm, how do we do those ? In a fit of defeatism I looked in the manual where it had the instructions "take to your dealer" ! FFS, changing a light bulb is a dealer job ?

Re: Fastest:

No, nothing like that. And it's a "locked down tighter than a duck's backside" system as well. And as hinted at, our IT support appear similarly hamstrung if there's anything out of the ordinary.

Re: I have a whole sack full of 'em.

You've just reminded me of an old one.

waaay back, we had a client with an old Apple ][ setup running something in their workshop (mostly spot welders). it was corrupting floppy disks - so it got brought to use and we couldn't find anything wrong, ran diagnostics for ages, all perfect. Took it back, it corrupted disks within minutes.

Some will have guessed right away. But what do old CRT monitors and floppy disks have in common ? Yes, they both involve magnetics. If you look at old marketing stuff, you'll see an Apple ][, with a couple of floppy drives sat on top (two side by side are conveniently about the same width as the computer), and the monitor sat on top of them. What most people didn't know, is that the Apple monitor had a plate in the bottom of the case to control the amount of magnetic field - so it didn't corrupt floppy disks in drives it's sat on. The customer wasn't using an Apple monitor, and we'd not had them stacked that way when we were testing. Actually, for some time we were in that "most people" group who didn't know that.

Re: Many solutions are "Common Sense"

And there's that old adage, "assume" makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me"

You remind me of a time a customer called our hell desk, ranting about how rubbish the UPS we'd supplied was - forgetting that it had been working just fine for a year or three. It's beeping madly, it must be faulty this [expletives roughly translating to rubbish] you've sold us. The techie kept his cool, logged into their server and checked the UPS status - it was on bypass due to overload.

Have you plugged anything in lately ? Pause while the customer went and checked. By the time they were back on the phone, the UPS was showing as normal again.

Indeed, someone had been a bit cold (to be fair, the server room was in the corner of an "officially unused for rating purposes" upstairs space and there wasn't any sockets near where they were working, other than the ones in the server room clearly labelled "UPS maintained, IT equipment only".

Funny enough, the people who rant that it's clearly all your fault, the equipment is rubbish, and so on ... rarely apologise for their attitude when they realise it's their fault.

I recall many years ago having a user complain that the system wasn't letting her log in many times - this was back on a Xenix or OpenServer system with serial terminals. It took a few repeats to get into the user that when they hit a wrong key, pressing the left arrow (cursor) key actually meant they were adding to the error, as in "passe←word". It looked OK on the screen so they assumed it must be right.

To be fair, the software they used all day was fine doing that within text entry fields, so they were used to using the left arrow key instead of backspace.

Re: Fastest:

I have a work laptop that has an incredibly sensitive trackpad. If I try and use it with the screen closed (external KV&M), the mere proximity of the internal screen makes it borderline wild. And the other day, I forgot and had the headset cable touching it, which also had interesting effects.

IT support could only offer the "turn off trackpad when mouse connected" setting. But that doesn't help because a) I sometimes want to use the trackpad, and b) I use a switch to switch my keyboard and mouse between multiple systems, so some of the time the mouse isn't connected.

Often it's just because they don't know any other way. Examples from previous jobs :

1) I'm asked to export some data from a Filemaker (remember that ?) databe and import it into our ERP system. Not a big task, but as it's going to be repeated several times/year (new products) I automate it by writing a calculation that gathers all the data I need complete with the right delimiters and in the right format into a text field I can export. I note that the person who designed the database did a massive calculation along the lines of "if price-int(price)<0.5 then rounded_price-int(price) else rounded_price=int(price)+1" - I casually mentioned the round function to them, they stuck their tongue out at me as a form of rebuke.

2) We're doing some data migration, which again involves pulling information from an old system to be imported into a new replacement. It's taking a while and I get the blame for "the system is so slow". I take a look at the command they are using (in vi), and see that it's (from memory) something like ":g/string//string/p". The trailing p on the end means to print each line that's processed - large file, serial terminal. I suggest dropping the p and am told they can't as that's the command they've been told to use. Eventually I persuade them to try ...

3) and this is one I'm sure everyone has had. Told to export some data to be sent to a customer. I create a text file as that's universal - anything can read it, plus the system it's coming from can't run Excel and I sure as heck don't want to have to learn the internals of an Excel file to generate it from my script. I get told my exported data is wrong, I check and it isn't. But it is, all the leading zeroes are missing ! Yes, open Excel, hit import, keep defaults, complain that the source data is wrong when Excel mangles it.

And I could go on. So many times I've been in one side or the other (yes, I'm not immune to it) of a conversation that includes "did you know you can ... ?"

Re: Doh..

That has to be the most stupid idea ever - disfigure a perfectly crafted hardware design to make it actually easy to use. No, totally bonkers idea.

That is a joke in case it wasn't clear. But I suspect it's the real reason, they won't do that because it "doesn't look nice".

Like the Oracle HR software we've been inflicted with at work. People keep going on about how great it is. It's not, it's a pile of unmitigated [insert expletives and references to defecation here]. It uses lots of whitespace to make sure stuff doesn't all fit on the screen unless you use full screen on a massive monitor. It makes links (things you can click on) hidden - there's literally zero clue whether some text is clickable until you hover over it. The contrast between the grey text and grey background is "poor". And the most annoying feature of all - many things involve multiple steps to get a list (e.g. of leave bookings) as you want it, you can't ctrl-click to open in new tab (you get an error message) to see the detail for an entry, and the back button doesn't take you back to where you were but to the default view so you have to reset the filters etc. again.

Re: Doh..

I've been convinced for decades that car manufacturers have a human disfactors department. Most specifically, a department to review mechanical maintenance, and reject designs that make it too easy.

What is obvious is that designers don't do their own maintenance, otherwise they wouldn't design what they do.

Microsoft still not said anything about unexpected Windows Server 2025 installs

Hmm, what' that tune playing in my head, oh yes it's that sci-fi signature tune do dee dee dee

It's not like Microsoft don't have previous for forcing OS "upgrades", labelling them as security updates, designing things so that even after you've said no several times it still installs itself. SWMBO used to say that the only time she used to hear me swear was when forced to sort out her Win 8 laptop.

iFixit to the rescue: McDonald's workers can rescue their own ice cream machines

Re: parent company has specified for

I disagree - at least in part.

Yes, there is scope for the brand owner to use it as you describe. On the other hand, it allows "independent"* businesses to get into a market with relative ease and hit the ground running with a well known brand. Consider the alternative :

You want to open a fast-food joint. Do it independently and you have to build up the brand and market - while competing with the big players already there. You may well be good and build up a bit of a local market by word of mouth, but if (for example) you are relying on the tourist trade, you'll probably lose a significant part of your market as people stick with the brands they know.

Become a franchisee to a known brand, you get a manual on setting up the premises (in the dim and dark past I recall that Apple dictated things for it's Apple Centres right down to the specific wallpaper to be used !), and an instantly recognisable brand. Yes, you'll pay a fair bit to the franchisee, but you get a lot of positives in return - where that line goes will depend on the market and brand owner, and their attitude to the franchisees (e.g. does the brand owner see them as a partner, or as a cash cow).

Now consider if there weren't franchises. If McD open a joint in your town themselves, do you think for one second that they'd suck any less money out to be shipped back to HQ ?

And simple observation suggests that the franchise system isn't as bad as you suggest given that so many people are prepared to run McD joints as a franchise.

The open secret of open washing – why companies pretend to be open source

Re: Not a universal definition

Then you have GPL and similar - essentially we'll share this between ourselves but add restrictions to keep away the people we don't want.

I'm not sure if I'm seeing what you intend in that sentence.

If you are trying to say that the GPL is "... share this between ourselves but add restrictions to keep away the people we don't want." then you are very wrong. The GPL is very clear that you cannot, in any way, restrict who can use your software or what they can use it for - so that means it can be used by people who don't like for purposes you don't tlike and there's nothing you can do about that.

If you are saying that some of these "looks like GPL if you squint a bit" licences do add such restricitons, then I;d agree with you - and that's a good reason to boycot them.

Digital River runs dry, hasn't paid developers for sales since July

Re: Vendors who chose Digital River should assume its responsibility

Yes, a bit sucky. But, depending on the amount, the customer could go to their bank for a refund, which the bank will take from DR - note, take from*, not ask for.

* I assume it's not changed, but years ago when I was in retail, to take cards we had to sign an agreement that basically gave the bank the right to take any reversed transactions directly from our bank account.

Re: Aha.

I suspect it goes along the lines of :

Sound company taken over by vultures. Vultures then (because they now have a controlling say in how it's run) have the business borrow lots of money from another of their ventures at silly interest rates. Over time, the other business gets it's money back (in cash terms) thanks to the high interest rates - but the victim business still has a massive debt because a lot of what they've paid has been just the interest. Victim business eventually runs out of cash due to the cost of servicing the debt and goes under. Vulture then steps in and (using preferential terms as a secured creditor, which was part of the loan agreement) takes the entirety of what's left and leaves unsecured creditors with nothing. Result, champagne all round for the vultures, pain and misery for anyone else - especially the staff and small businesses that use used the service. In this case, finding excuses not to pay the small developers for a few months while still selling software merely increases the amount of cash in the bank that the vultures can take.

China claims Starlink signals can reveal stealth aircraft – and what that really means

Re: "a modern society creates so much noise in the microwave spectrum that..

I always through this especially impressive as the GPS signals spread their power over a very wide bandwidth in order to be very difficult to jam

You need to lookup a bit more about how they work. Yes, they use spread spectrum, which if done carefully can mean your signal is actually below the noise floor. But once your correlator is locked to the spreading signal of the transmitter, it suddenly becomes a high power, narrowband signal.

And in one of those "who'd have thought it" things, it's something Hedi Lamar (yes, the actress) tried to interest the US military in - but they didn't see any value ! https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/201106/physicshistory.cfm

250 million-plus unused IPv4 addresses should be left alone, argues network boffin

Re: That's interesting...

Look a little closer.

The default on any modern device is ... tada! ... privacy addresses. Your device literally picks new addresses on a fairly frequent basis, from a /64 prefix. Yes, that's 2^64 addresses to go at, or 2^32 times the size of the ENTIRE IPv4 address space. Tracking individual addresses is pointless.

But, you will be playing in a /64 prefix which is effectively no different privacy wise to the single IPv4 address people are used to sharing at their NAT gateway. So a miscreant can consider the /64 prefix as representing all your devices in the same way as they treat your IPv4 address now. In principle, they have no way of knowing if traffic from (say) two different IPv6 address in the same prefix are the same or different devices in the same way that they can't differentiate between one or two devices sending traffic from behind a NAT gateway with single IPv4 address.

Because of this, few bother using the address. The professional creeps like Feacesborg have used other techniques for a very long time to track people.

Re: it's from Plusnet

Yup, been with them for years. But guess what, while they used to be one of the best - with tech support that worked (you could actually communicate with people who had a clue about the tech), more and more the've gone down the race to the bottom of the pond. If your service work, great; if it doesn't, then good luck with their support these days. And the router they provide is ... very basic, has "interesting" bugs, and they have no plans for IPv6.

For good measure I've got to migrate a web site off their hosting. Had it for years, running on a domain name they provide for free after some service f-up years ago. I can't send mail from that domain now as it doesn't have an SPF record. And I can't add an SPF record because their DNS doesn't support it. If I don't use their DNS, I can't use their hosting - so I have to migrate the hosting (and start paying for the domain name which I'll also migrate), then I can move the DNS, and then I'll be able to send mail again.

I'll be moving to another provider at the sooner of a) my contract being up, or b) the fibre altnet busy installing in my town takes orders.

Re: Elephant

I wish I could upvote you for the first bits, but downvote you for the last paragraph.

There is NOTHING AT ALL that NAT does for you security wise that a basic stateful firewall wouldn't do by default. Assume a default "block all incoming traffic" rule, you don't get any unsolicited inbound traffic coming in. But setup a connection with a peer, and yes I think it would be restricted to UDP, and your outbound traffic will also enable the inbound traffic - leaving the centralised part of "whatever" as merely an exchange for peers to find each other. And guess what, that's what BitTorrent does - the tracker merely allows devices to find each other, after that they talk peer-peer IF the user was able to get things to work via the IPv4 NAT.

Re: "Extensive use of IPv4 NAT"

TBF, I always found it took a few attempts to get Draytek routers set up properly anyway - in part because they are very capable devices with necessarily complex config options.

Relatively recent is a relative term. Compared to the age of the internet, yes, relatively recent. But it was a good few years ago now.

Re: Well...

Also running dual stack.

Problem 1 - never noticed it

Problem 2 - define "change addresses on everything", more below

Problem 3 - dunno, mine doesn't do it at all which is why I'll be changing when my contract is up, or when the altnet currently throwing loads of fibre into our town is able to connect me, whichever comes first. For now I use HE's tunnelbroker service which mostly works - like others I have occasional (and they are occasional) where services are blocked (no, not unroutable, blocked) by someone's policy, but I get that in the IUPv4 world as well.

Now, that addressing things issue ...

The reason you think it's not a problem when you change providers with IPv4 is because your IPv4 connection is BROKEN. You're behind NAT (or more correctly, NAPT), and that is by definition broken. "But everything works" is only because lots of developers have put a lot of effort into working around/hiding all the stuff that NAT breaks. Across the internet, a VERY LARGE amount of money and resources is spent on "unbreaking" things - for example, without NAT, VoIP providers wouldn't need to route all your traffic through a gateway who's sole function is to unbreak SIP. In short, NAT wastes a sh1tload of resources that could be better spent on making things that are productive. But let's leave that aside and talk IPv6.

For most of what you do, the address doesn't matter. For most of your internal stuff, mDNS and the other bits of automatic service discovery should take care of things. But if that's not enough, you can use private addressing internally and put those in your internal DNS. For externally accessible stuff - I have some of that, and the obvious question is "so how often do you change providers ?", followed by "and why don't you complain about the same issue updating DNS with IPv4 ?".