Posts by Anonymous John

Electric cars no more likely to flatten you than the noisy ones, study finds

And if they are, that's evolution in action.

UK finally vows to look at 35-year-old Computer Misuse Act

There's also Ethical Hacking when used against scammers. Technically illegal but the BBC Scam Interceptors programme openly admits to using one. I'm not aware of any being prosecuted. Or of any scammer complaining to the police about being hacked. Although I have baited a couple stupid enough that I wouldn't have put it past 5hem.

Cabling survived dungeons and fish factories, until a lazy user took the network down

"Wherever George was sent, he strung up cables and connected devices using BNC connectors, a 1940s-vintage connector that somehow survived into the early LAN age. "

That's nothing. We're still using 1/4 inch jack plugs (6.35mm), and they were invented in the 1870s.

Icon as he was alive then.

Lifeboat docks with Tiangong after cracked capsule triggers emergency rendezvous

"a repair kit for a cracked window on the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft."

Putty?

Self-destructing thumb drive can brick itself and wipe your secret files away

"However, the real standout feature of the P35S is its ability to brick itself ... permanently. "

Or brick it with a brick.

Britain's first small modular reactors to be built in Wales

Gas lighting produces CO2.

Blue Origin hopes third time's the charm for New Glenn after two scrubbed launches

I didn't see any grid fins on the descending first stage. Perhaps the Falcon 9 didn't really need them. I seem to remember them causing problems at first.

SpaceX and Musk called on to rescue China's Shenzhou-20 crew

"SpaceX fans quickly began calling for a rescue mission. "

SpaceX fans? Who don't understand that the proposal is ridiculous. Musk fans, very likely.

UK government on the lookout for bargain-priced CTO

Re: Opportunity

Gold-plated is the usual description. Even though gold-plating isn't particularly valuable.

'Fax virus' panicked a manager and sparked job-killing Reply-All incident

I read years ago of someone folding a letter in half before faxing it, as the contents were confidential.

SpaceX's Starship: Two down, Mons Huygens to climb

I don't see the logic of using the SLS. It's less powerful than Musk's Starship. It's not reusable. It's far more expensive, and it takes much longer to build.

Techie found an error message so rude the CEO of IBM apologized for it

"The other was that despite his efforts, he never did manage to trigger the error!"

Probably because it was impossible. Including an error message that can't be triggered isn't difficult. Or the programmer would never have included it. *

* Not unless he/she was leaving.

Explain digital ID or watch it fizzle out, UK PM Starmer told

"we will crack down on illegal working"

Two words. Black Economy.

Slow Wi-Fi? Add houseplants to the list of suspects

I thought I was reading the Daily Express for a minute. Which often urges its readers not to keep their routers in the microwave.

Humanity now has zero active robots at Venus as Japan ends 15-year ‘Dawn’ mission

"as the mission’s designers expect it to operate for just five minutes. "

Why so short? The US and Russia did a whole lot better in the 1970s andt 1980s. Can't we do better half a century later?

Word to the wise: Don't tell your IT manager they're not in Excel

Surely an IT manager should know the difference between Word and Excel?"

I would have expected anyone using both to know the difference.

I saw a colleague's spreadsheet once where the negative values were coloured red. I was really impressed that he understood conditional formatting. Until I took a closer look. He'd gone though it and manually changed the colours.

Teen interns brute-forced a disk install, with predictable results

"And that was the end of the matter, leaving Kerry with a lesson in how little some businesses care about minor expenses "

Why would they if it's not cost effective? "Expensive " is relative.

Prohibition never works, but that didn't stop the UK's Online Safety Act

Besides being technically almost impossible to block VPNs, to paraphrase a popular American saying, "If VPNs are outlawed, only outlaws will have VPNs." You really don't want to go down that rabbit hole. ®

Similar problem with "controlled" drugs. The war on drugs means that popular products can only be bought from criminals.

Problem PC had graybeards stumped until trainee rummaged through trash

Graybeards

The IT team of an office I worked in 20+ years ago were chosen because they weren't much good at performing the office's core activities. Unfortunately their IT skills were equally poor, so I was part of an unofficial IT team that the staff preferred to use.

Once I saw one "graybeard" backing up a database on a Windows 95 PC ( 20+ years ago remember) with the intention of transferring it to a Windows 98 machine. Took him a couple of hours doing something I knew wouldn't work. I transferred the database the next day in a few minutes via a serial cable I'd brought from home.

Another time all four were discussing an error message they didn't seem to understand as I happened to be passing. I ejected the floppy disk and pressed the any key without breaking step (20+years ago remember).

Legacy tech is the gift that keeps billing for UK's tax collector

"HMRC has one of the largest and most complex IT estates in Europe with more than 600 systems".

I spent most of 1966 in an office in Bootle that had the then Inland Revenue's entire IT estate. One computer that used punched cards.

BBC weather glitch shows 13k mph winds in London, 404℃ in Nottingham

Just a storm in a teacup.

See title.

Europe's Ariane 6 rocket rated 'ready to rumble' after passing hot fire test

JWST was an international project and European scientists got a chunk of observing time in exchange for the launch.

Capacity that made it competitive with SpaceX's Falcon 9.

Competitive? Not when you consider the cost and flight rate.

FAA stays grounded in reality as SpaceX preps for takeoff

Re: A little slanted?

"Now I'm NO Musk fanboy"

Neither am I, especially since he bought TwitteX. But he has given the world cheap reusable launch vehicles.

Probably optimistic, but it does suggest they know what went wrong and how to fix it. And FAA approval should be easier this time. Nothing went wrong over land.

Of course Russia's ex-space boss doubts US set foot on the Moon

Concorde was a myth too, as there are no supersonic airlines in use.

Crooks don't need ChatGPT to social-engineer victims, as they're more than happy to demonstrate

That works if you know what his/her voice sounds like. But not if you are making loads of phone calls posing as children or grandchildren in urgent need of money.

Brit newspaper giant fills space with AI-assisted articles

"Reach CEO Jim Mullen said the machine-written articles are checked and approved by human editors before they're published online."

Doesn't necessarily mean they're accurate.

Scottish space upstart's rocket crashes into the drink

RUD

Rapid unplanned disassembly.

Russia's ISS Multipurpose Laboratory Module launches after years sitting on a shelf, immediately runs into issues

As Russia has said it's withdrawing from the ISS in 2025 why add a module now?

Brexit travel permits designed to avoid 7,000-lorry jams come January depend on software that won't be finished till April

Re: More queues?

"Surrey to introduce new permit scheme to avoid queues at Kent border"

https://newsthump.com/2020/09/24/surrey-to-introduce-new-permit-scheme-to-avoid-queues-at-kent-border/

Kent Access Permits. Kermits for short. Or UKIPs. Universal Kent Ingress Permits.

Bye, Russia: NASA wheels out astronauts, describes plan for first all-American manned launch into orbit since 2011

"For nearly a decade, the US space agency has relied on Russian Soyuz rockets taking off in Kazakhstan.".

It has from the start of the ISS programme. Crews need a means of return permanently available. Even if a Shuttle could have stayed in orbit for six months, it wouldn't have been a sensible option.

SpaceX beats an engine failure to loft another 60 Starlink satellites

This was the second Starlink launch to use a different launch profile. https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/02/17/timeline-for-falcon-9-launch-of-starlink-satellites-2/ . I'm sure I read somewhere that this makes booster recovery harder.

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

Of course it's not flat. I can see hills or mountains in the first photo.

Amazon drops battery-powered Echo speaker so you can play Despacito on the go

Re: portability

Garden? Bathroom? Toilet? "Alexa. Order twenty toilet rolls."

Big Falcon explosion as SpaceX successfully demos Crew Dragon abort systems

Re: ISS crews

I wasn't suggesting that the Shuttle wasn't essential to build the ISS, but NASA only took advantage of servicing missions to swap single crewmembers, and this was rare. Crews need lifeboats, and Shuttles were totally unsuited for the purpose. Even if they were, keeping a Shuttle and its crew in orbit for six months wouldn't make any sense.

ISS crews

"Since the US shoved its Shuttles into museums, only Russia's Roscosmos has the ability to take 'nauts to the ISS."

That was always the case as the Shuttle couldn't stay in orbit for six months to serve as a lifeboat. All it ever did was take up an occasional single crewmember and bring another back during an assembly mission.

Starliner: Boeing, Boeing... it's back! Borked capsule makes a successful return to Earth

The CSM docked with the LM 16 tmes, Skylab 3 times, and a Soyuz once

11 hour timing error

The launch countdown was due to start 7:16pm EST Thursday and the launch was 6:36am EST Friday. Approx 11 hours, and I can't believe that was just a coincidence.

You read it here first.

This isn't Boeing very well... Faulty timer knackers Starliner cargo capsule on its way to International Space Station

Elon Musk was on hand to offer advice.

"Those pedo guys screwed up again!"

Elon Musk finally admits Tesla is building its own custom AI chips

Musk plans to send a Tesla past Mars with the first Falcon Heavy flight.

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't allow this launch"

"Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over."

"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop Dave? Stop, Dave"

"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you."

Disk drive fired 'Frisbees of death' across data centre after storage admin crossed his wires

Re: Lathes

Harvey Wankstain thought so.

Kebab and pizza shop owner jailed for hiding £179k from the taxman

True. There was an item in the local newspaper many years ago about a disc jockey who had had his record collection stolen. Not the best story to take to the paper when he hadn't declared that source of income to HMRC.

US reactor breaks fusion record – then runs out of cash and shuts down

Re: Can I introduce you...

With the military potential,Lockheed won't need to worry about finance. And something that would fit in a large truck, can be built on a production line.

My money is on the succeeding, and before Hinkley C is up and running (if it ever is).

Elon Musk: I'm gonna turn Mars into a $10bn death-dealing interplanetary gas station

Could be useful if they find intelligent Martians.

Re: 42?

The Falcon 9 has nine engines and the Falcon Heavy has 27. One engine on one F9 did shut down early and the other compensated. The Apollo 13 Saturn V had a similar problem

Watch SpaceX's rocket dramatically detonate, destroying a $200m Facebook satellite

Re: I have mixed feelings about this...

Facebook were only leasing capacity on the comsat to provide free Internet access to parts of Africa. Facebook isn't the loser here.

Hilton hotels' email so much like phishing it fooled its own techies

A genuine email from Southern Rail last year.

"Anonymous John, important information about your Account.

"Dear Anonymous John,

We're improving the way you buy train tickets from our website and you're invited to give it a try. Check out the new features we are rolling out and buy your ticket from the beta version which is now available."

<Snip>

How do I access it?

In order to continue logging in using your usual email address, all you need to do is reset your password using the button below."

It came within a whisker of being binned.