Posts by Elongated Muskrat

YouTube loves recommending conservative vids regardless of your beliefs

Re: Left or right

This is what I come here to see, troll on troll action.

We need a popcorn icon.

Re: Who decides what is left and right ?

Says someone who thinks anyone on the left wing is to the left of Stalin?

This is why labels like "left wing" and "right wing" are deeply unhelpful, because there are lots of idiots who think that they refer only to extreme viewpoints and churn out polarising rhetoric like the post above.

Re: Who decides what is left and right ?

As someone with two degrees in the physical sciences, I can assure you that left-right political categorisation is not a scientific discipline. There is such a thing as scientific analysis of political views, and the whole "left/right" categorisation is such an oversimplification as to be nearly worthless.

In terms of who gets to define what is "left and right", well, according to Wikipedia:

Within the left–right political spectrum, Left and Right were coined during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in the French Estates General. Those who sat on the left generally opposed the Ancien Régime and the Bourbon monarchy and supported the French Revolution, the creation of a democratic republic and the secularisation of society while those on the right were supportive of the traditional institutions of the Ancien Régime.

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_wing, there is also some discourse on the origins in the related article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_wing)

This can’t be a real bomb threat: You've called a modem, not a phone

Sparks from static electricity *can* be hot enough to ignite petrol vapour, though, which is why all the locking pins are removed from pumps in the UK so you can't fill your car unattended and then go to pick up the nozzle and "boom".

Re: You can't be to careful

I believe a "controlled explosion" is no such thing, and is actually a rapid disassembly using compressed air or water that blows the suspected bomb apart faster than an explosive detonation can propagate. As such, it releases less energy, and stops the bomb going off; the idea is that any ignition of the explosive leads to it burning rather than exploding as it doesn't get the chance for a chain-reaction detonation, at least not a full-scale one, and (hopefully) the resulting bang is much smaller and less forceful than it otherwise would be. You still don't want to be standing anywhere near it, though.

Software engineer accused of stealing $300k from employer was 'inspired by Office Space'

Missing details in this article

There's no mention of whether his stapler was returned to him

Sysadmin infected bank with 'alien virus' that sucked CPUs dry

Re: sitting idle means they are using less power

You might think that, but for political reasons*, the unit price of electricity is tied to the most expensive generating source, so when the price of natural gas sky-rockets, so does the price of electricity. I believe the price per KWh for 'leccy is still higher than gas (apparently currently 34p vs 10.3p), although the gas price might be higher than what the 'leccy used to be before extreme capitalism took hold.

*As far as I can tell, those political reasons appear to involve brown envelopes and record profits for producers.

BOFH: It's 4ft tall, heavyset, has optional fax. No they didn't take the toner!

Re: A4 or Letter?

I'll never understand the US mindset. You guys are happy to go with international standardisation for a lot of things, and in matters of IT are often a driving force behind that standardisation, but paper sizes, middle-endian dates, and a steadfast refusal to use the metric system in favour of an archaic weights and measurements system that doesn't use powers of ten - just why?

Re: Another great BOFH episode

Well, you know, once the boss has finished carrying the crates up to the office (for some reason the lift is out of order), one by one, he has to go back down to lock his car.

By this point, he's going to be out of breath, and moving quite slowly...

Intel offers desktop chip that can hit 6GHz if everything goes right, you can keep it cool, stars align, pigs fly

I suspect it's in the same way that people who write the marketing guff for storage use "metric" measurements for the capacity, so "1TB" is actually 1,000,000,000,000 bytes (931GB), and not 1,099,511,627,776 bytes, like it should be.

And no, I refuse to use "TiB" and "GiB" just because marketing droids lie and have decided to repurpose a perfectly good, existing, abbreviation.

So which is it?

It needs liquid nitrogen (at -196°C) or a standard off-the-shelf CPU water cooler (at about £130)? It goes without saying that there's quite a bit of difference between the two, and this article does seem to contain quite a bit of hyperbole if it's suggesting they are comparable.

Royal Mail, cops probe 'cyber incident' that's knackered international mail

To be fair, the Belfast Telegraph probably got the scoop here, because apparently the printers in NI sorting offices started printing out ransom notes!

This does imply that those who deployed the ransomware either gave it the ability to generically print to any printer they could find, or that they knew something about the infrastructure they were targeting, and thought this would be "cute".

Re: Say no more, Squire. Least said, soonest mended, eh?

Public services (of which the national postal system is surely one) shouldn't be about turning a profit. The problem here, is that as a nationalised entity, the financial impetus was to charge enough to cover the costs. As a privatised entity, the impetus is to charge as much as they can get away with (and cut costs) to make as much profit as feasibly possible.

It's no coincidence that the price of a stamp has gone up, since privatisation, way over the rate of inflation, and that the staff are now striking over pay and conditions, largely because their pay has NOT gone up with inflation, and because the management are trying to change working conditions to force people to work more evenings and weekends, use their own vehicles, and act more like zero-hours agency staff with fewer employee rights. If my employer did this to me, I'd be on strike (if I was a member of a union, that is). Meanwhile, whilst those in charge are bemoaning the fact that they "aren't turning a profit," hundreds of millions of pounds are paid out in dividends to shareholders.

Privatisation is always about private equity getting richer at the expense of everybody else, with the possible exception of the politicians who are responsible for the privatisation, who I'm "sure" are not getting any backhanders.

Rasomware gang "support rep"

Well, if they say they didn't do it, who am I to question their trustworthiness?

Virgin Orbit doesn't

Re: Had it been a success....

Well, we must be talking geographically, because ol' Shappsy can't have failed to notice that Cornwall isn't politically within the European Union, any more than Kazakhstan is.

Re: Had it been a success....

Indeed, in the same way that the Falklands, Gibraltar, and Rockall aren't part of the British Isles, whilst the Republic of Ireland is (whilst quite clearly not being part of Britain).

Re: Had it been a success....

Probably depends on what you mean when you say, "Europe". The continent of Europe, which decidedly doesn't contain French Guiana, the EU, which does, or possibly even the European continental plate (on which a large part of Iceland sits as well), which, again, doesn't...

Re: Something else to add to the Brexit Britain Epic Fail Compilation.

To be fair, the purpose of dropping it from a plane isn't the speed it is done at, but more the altitude. Of course, the rocket still has to get to orbital velocity, but it doesn't have to do it from ground level, carrying all the fuel it needs to lift it to that altitude (and the fuel to lift the fuel). There's a reason that the first stage of a rocket is usually the biggest, and also why it gets jettisoned when it is empty.

Re: Had it been a success....

Are your friends Jacob Rees-Mogg and Grant Schapps?

Re: Had it been a success....

That probably depends on whether you consider Baikonur to be in Europe or Asia...

Re: On the positive side

would have made for an interesting couple of minutes fraction of a second.

There, FTFY.

"They'll know what went wrong," too, is probably going to depend entirely on what they can tell from the telemetry. It will probably be of the nature of "it was working up until this point, and then we lost telemetry." They might know exactly what it was trying to do at the point it failed, but it might not tell them why it didn't work.

More detailed analysis might be difficult on the melted bits of metal at the bottom of the Atlantic.

I was about to say the same thing. The bit between South Wales and Cornwall is clearly misrepresented on maps. It's actually a full day's drive if you hit traffic.

It's probably better to take the M4 across the Severn crossing, though, rather than waiting for the Aust ferry. It stopped operating in 1966.

I spy with my little Pi: Upgraded cameras for single board computer

Re: Weak

Not all pixels are created equal, and quite often high pixel density sensors downsample to even out the image quality. Optics and the quality thereof are also of importance.

Buy cheap, and your quality may vary. Just take a look at what you can get on Wish, and you too can play the "will this remotely resemble the picture when delivered" game.

If it helps, Pimoroni currently have the 4Gb 4 essentials kit, and 3A+ in stock

Cybercrooks are telling ChatGPT to create malicious code

Re: Test Code

It's probably a good enough tool for that. You'd need a deterministic algorithm to prove that it has given 100% code coverage though.

Re: Garbage In, AI generated Code out

People conflate "AI" with "AGI" (artificial general intelligence). The former has been abused so much it has no real meaning, from the Eliza chatbot to the output of ML algorithms (confusing opacity with intelligence).

If we were ever to invent a true AGI, it would probably be something so alien that it might present an existential threat. By definition, such an intelligence would not be under the control of its creators (if you could control what it is thinking, it would not be truly intelligent). Luckily, it is also most likely practically impossible, and can be chucked in the same bin as cold fusion, antigravity, and wormhole travel.

Re: You have received the IRISH virus

I think we might just have posted some people's trigger words.

I'm not sure what part of my wholly factual post the downvoter didn't like, but I suspect it's just because he didn't like the feeling of the cognitive dissonance between objective reality and his jingoism.

I suspect we'll never know because "single downvote guy" never leaves an explanatory comment.

Re: Oh well that's OK then

But is deterministic.

Well, to a degree anyway, if our laws were well written enough to be properly deterministic, we wouldn't need so many lawyers...

Re: Oh well that's OK then

OK then, try posting a question on SO about how to write ransomware and see how long it takes for the question to be removed, and your account banned.

Re: You have received the IRISH virus

I do actually know a guy in Dublin who thought "IREXIT" was a grand idea.

The guy's a massive turd though, and most Irish people I know don't share his views.

The last I heard, I think he'd been arrested for assaulting someone.

"You're really not going to like it"

Re: All invention can be used for good or bad

To be honest, "ML" is stretching it a bit. As far as I can tell, it's not much more than pattern abstraction and application.

The question, of course, is: isn't that the same as what the human mind does? And that's actually a trickier question to answer than you might think.

Re: NOT a database

I'm pretty sure you're arguing with an ML chatbot that someone has cobbled together there. Look at its previous posts...

China's Mars rover hibernates for a scarily long time

Re: Predictable problems invite solutions

This leads me to wonder whether coating the panels in a thin conductive film, and earthing (marsing?) this via a probe into the ground, or one of those earthing strips you used to see on the backs of cars in the '90s when gullible people thought static electricity made them car sick, might work.

I can't imagine a layer a few microns thick would significantly affect the efficiency of the solar cells underneath.

Mixing an invisible laser and a fire alarm made for a disastrous demo

Nothing. How do you cool the water? Water cooling is pretty efficient for moving heat, but sooner or later you have to dump that heat somewhere, and that probably involves noisy fans and heat exchangers. Also, more moving parts to break than just using lots of noisy fans to start with.

(I'm assuming you don't want the massive water bill you'd get from putting a continuous flow of water down the drain, cold in, warm out)

Frickin' megalodons with frickin' lasers on their frickin' heads.

...maybe this is why they are extinct?

Twitter data dump: 200m+ account database now free to download

So, what you are saying, is that you find it cringe?

You are Alan Partridge AICMFP. Aha!

I think people are only just now starting to realise that anything they put on the internet is essentially there forever, thanks in part to the wayback machine, but there are lots of other archives and mirrors of various bits and bobs. Usenet messages I posted in 1995 (under my actual real-life identity) are still obtainable to anyone who gives that much of a fuck about what a naïve young man thought over a quarter of a century ago.

Re: Twitter pawn my account

Elon's trying to deactivate Twitter himself, by not paying rent, suppliers, etc. etc.

You just deactivated your account. Do you think that has done anything to the data Twitler holds about you, other than making it inaccessible to you?

Ok, Twonker it is.

_{(rushes off to register twonkr.com)}

The point here, isn't that these are user details from twitter, but that they are identifiable information. I'm not sure what they include other than email addresses, but those are of non-zero value to the Bad Guys™.

For instance, they could use them to mount a phishing campaign with a fake twitter log in page. For the large percentage of users who will have re-used passwords, that means they could be getting passwords that have been reused for other, more valuable online assets, such as internet banking, Paypal, Amazon, eBay, and so on. They could also be used as part of a broader attempt to fraudulently impersonate someone.

Also, verified email addresses mean a verified attack surface for trying to hack someone's email.

Cleaner ignored 'do not use tap' sign, destroyed phone systems ... and the entire building

Re: Concrete dust = Kryptonite

True, and I suppose the harmfulness of powdered 'crete depends on what epoch of computing we are talking about. In the days of "walking fridges" and blinkenlights I can well imagine that disks were fragile and temperamental beasties. I don't recall seeing air holes on any of the various disks I have in the last PC I built. I tend to re-use drives from one generation to the next, I think last time I did that I "put into storage" any drives smaller than half a terabyte, but I've had plenty going back to the days of full size IDE jobs,and they're all in a box somewhere (I've never experienced a drive failure despite not being particularly precious with them).

These days, a lot of storage is solid state, and I wonder how well that plays with particulates. I'm thinking it probably depends on particulate density and conductivity. Despite the air filters on the inlet fans in my gaming PC case, I still have to periodically open it up to remove the accumulation of dust, although this is more for cosmetic reasons, it has never caused a failure.

Re: Concrete dust = Kryptonite

Fair point about the air holes (presumably for equalising pressure, I wouldn't expect any appreciable airflow through them). I wonder what it is about concrete dust, rather than other things, such as general dust or pollen, that makes it more destructive? Is it particle size, chemical make up, Hygroscopicity (good word that), or something else? A quick google indicates that concrete dust + moisture can form a conductive layer that isn't going to play well with electronics, so I'm wondering whether drive failures are from a combination of vibration and dust in the controllers causing it to get right in to the electronics and making paths where there should be none.

Re: Operator Purée

Yes, technically that's an octagonal prism, but we all know what he meant, although reading that did make me twitch...

Re: Water and IT

1000‰ is mathematically the same thing as 100%...

Re: Concrete dust = Kryptonite

All these anecdotes about concrete dust causing drive failures, and I'm left thinking that every single drive I've ever handled has been a sealed unit. Is the dust somehow getting into the housings (possibly due to how microscopically fine it is), or is it just getting into fans and causing cooling failures? Or onto controller boards / motherboards and killing those?

Cops chase Tesla driver 'dozing' with Autopilot on

Re: Some clarifications to comments below

I keep reading "FSD" and my brain keeps immediately jumping to Elite: Dangerous and "Frame Shift Drive".

But that then got me thinking, that game does have an "autopilot" feature for docking, undocking, takeoffs and landings, and the important thing to note is that, even in a game where the thing controlling the "autopilot" has full control over the environment as well, you'd be a fool to use it unattended, because it's not perfect, and sometimes requires you to take manual control to avoid collisions, or "lingering too long" in the docking port of a space station.

The thing, here, is that, in the real world, pretty much none of the variables and parameters are known, and nothing else in the universe is under the control of the "autopilot" system, turning what is probably (in a single player mode) an NP-hard problem into an impossibility. The idea that a "self drive" system can act predictably and consistently safely within an unbounded system sounds implausible at best. Humans don't always manage it, and our hardware is a damn sight more complex and adaptable than whatever his Muskiness can build into a glorified milk-float.

It is quite possible, of course, to modify a vehicle to make it unroadworthy (this is not the manufacturer's fault), such as removing the airbags, or welding spikes onto the bonnet.

Features on a vehicle, however, should "fail safe". If I'm driving my car down the motorway at "70" mph, and attach a weight to the steering wheel, and take my feet off the accelerator, it will fail safe by coming to a stop; albeit being stopped on a motorway isn't exactly safe, but it's safer than continuing to travel at 70 mph until it hits something.

The "auto drive" feature on a Tesla (or on any other car) is not failing safe in this case, and the effort to make it "fail dangerous", and effectively continue to travel under no control is apparently trivial. If the failure modes can't be made to be overwhelmingly safe, then the feature is dangerous.

More pre-Musk Twitter 1.0 execs leave the building

Re: And yet...

Don't know why someone downvoted you for that, it looks like a sound analysis to me.

The whole "give the debt to the company I'm buying" thing does sound pretty dodgy, and I've heard about this happening before, as part of "vulture capitalism" (no disrespect to El Reg here).

Presumably, in order to get that debt to move onto the company's books in the first place, one has to either have the money, or have collateral to get a loan. This leaves me wondering if Musk would essentially forfeit the assets used to secure that loan if the company went bankrupt.

I mean, anyone handing out an unsecured loan for billions of dollars to a man-child like Musk would need their head examined; probably as a research project for future generations, frozen and sliced thinly under a microscope.

Re: And yet...

Defaulting on rent payments is not standard practice anywhere I know of (and incurs statutory interest alongside whatever contract terms apply on the tenancy). It will affect the company's credit rating, in the same way as defaulting on your mortgage repayments isn't going to improve your personal credit score.

Getting your company evicted from and office building (which you are going to have spent significant money on fitting out, with things like meeting rooms and kitchens, and offices to make them something more than an empty volume of space) is certainly not "standard practice" for a business that is a going concern.

If Musk doesn't want Twitter, why run it into the ground and bankruptcy? That's both more expensive and reputationally damaging than just liquidating it. Unless Musk does actually want to keep it as a going concern, but he is both incompetent, and possibly illiquid himself.