I wish them well, but right now (0900UT on St Paddy's Day) the top item on Betelgeuse takes you to a 404 page.
Posts by Chris Miller
3576 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Apr 2007
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This one weird trick can make online publishing faster, safer, more attractive, and richer
C++ creator calls for help to defend programming language from 'serious attacks'
NASA solar mission data recovering after server room flood fiasco
Early mornings, late evenings, weekends. Useless users always demand support
Shove your office mandates, people still prefer working from home
SpaceX hits 400 launches of Falcon 9 rocket
EU buyers still shunning pure electric vehicles, prefer hybrids
Most people who can realistically operate with an EV - own drive for charging, wealthy (to afford the purchase) and not a "road warrior" - have already got one, to cash in on the tax and other incentives offered by government subsidies (money transfers from the poor to the rich, whodathunkit!). To the amazement of nobody at all, the bottom then drops out of the new EV market.
Reaction Engines' hypersonic hopes stall as funding fizzles out
I made this network so resilient nothing could possibly go wro...
The amber glow of bork illuminates Brighton Station
Re: "A toasted bacon sandwich"
I'm old enough to remember griddle cars. 50 years ago, my brother and I (travelling round Scotland on a rail rover ticket) took breakfast on the Royal Highlander out of Inverness. Toasted bacon sandwiches and unlimited refills of toast and tea, while Aviemore and the Pass of Drumochter flowed past the windows - hard to beat. ISTR there were griddle cars on a few of the southern electrics from London, too,. BR dining cars weren't all curly sandwiches!
iGulu F1 could be the hoppy ending to your home-brew horror show
EV sales hit speed bump as drivers unplug from the electric dream
Trivially? If you're a member of the right 'club' (how many different EV charging brands are there?) and pay your dues. But if not, you can be on 70p a kWh (UK), which is broadly the same cost per mile as petrol. Unless you've got an 'off-peak' deal (and are therefore paying more for you 'peak' electricity), even home charging is unlikely to be ¼ the price of petrol.
The problem EV manufacturers face is that EV owners need to: be wealthy (they're still significantly more expensive than ICE equivalents); live in a house with a private drive (so they can charge at home); and not be a road-warrior (or you'll be spending a lot of time recharging remotely at a cost per mile hardly cheaper than petrol). And most people who satisfy these criteria already have an EV.
I live in a wealthy Home Counties village and there are more EVs than you can shake a stick at, with Teslas* on every other drive. But I don't know anyone who doesn't also have an ICE vehicle for when they need to do real driving.
* other EV manufacturers are available, allegedly
Hello? Emergency services? I'd like to report a wrong number
San Francisco set to ban rent-hiking algorithms used by landlords
Second NHS IT system confirmed to be affected by CrowdStrike issues
HP to discontinue online-only e-series LaserJet amid user gripes
Outback shocker left Aussie techie with a secret not worth sharing
ITER delays first plasma for world's biggest fusion power rig by a decade
US Army: We want to absorb private-sector AI 'as fast as y'all are building them'
Millions forced to use brain as OpenAI's ChatGPT takes morning off
Dublin debauchery derails Portal to NYC in six days flat
Ransomware negotiator weighs in on the extortion payment debate with El Reg
Re: It is better to avoid a problem than have to fix it.
There may well be some businesses and organisations that could or should operate in the way you suggest, but for most ordinary folks and non-safety-critical organisations, following all of your suggestions would mean going out of business (I'd except "don't hold personal data you don't need to hold" - but that's a standard part of most data protection legislation in any case).
China 'the most competitive market in the world' for the iPhone says Tim Cook
San Francisco's light rail to upgrade from floppy disks
Re: "best in the US"
Once safe, cheap commercial air travel was developed, rail became hopeless for journeys much longer than 500 miles. I've taken 1,500 mile rail journeys in the US (because I'm a rail nerd) - it takes 2 or 3 days and the only passengers are tourists and those who refuse to travel by air (mainly Amish and similar). Even taking European high-speed trains, I've done London-Lyon-Barcelona in a day, but it was a very long day (over 11 hours for an average speed of ~90 mph) - I could have flown to LA in the same time (and probably cheaper, too).
Big US cities (NY, Boston, Chicago, even LA to an extent) have extensive, cheap, well-used commuter rail systems, but inter-city distances are just too great, except for the Bos-Wash corridor.
Note to editors: BART isn't a "light rail" system by most definitions, it's too fast and too heavy. It's a pretty standard commuter rail network with a weird track gauge (for odd reasons known only to the locals).
Engine cover flies from Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 during takeoff
Re: Is it Just Me??
Causing any damage? Of course, land as soon as practicable is absolutely the correct course of action, but the press vibes are that the aircraft was about to fall from the sky, which is nonsense. To purse my analogy, your wing mirror cover coming off **might** land under your tyre, and then cause a blowout and a crash, but that doesn't of itself mean it's a major incident.
Nvidia: Why write code when you can string together a couple chat bots?
Re: "It is very likely that you assemble a team of AI"
Billions lost to fraud and error during UK's pandemic spending spree
Re: Oops, we stole it
And what would have been your reaction (and that of the media) at the time, if the government had said: "Faced with a pandemic, we're procuring lots of PPE and other medical equipment, but we must go through all the necessary steps to prevent fraud, rigorous testing to ensure quality standards are met, getting three competitive tenders on each bid, validating DEI and anti-slavery policies of suppliers, etc, which will delay things by a few months."? Note that Starmer's Labour were supportive of all these purchases, except for demands for "harder and faster".
Work to resolve binary babble from Voyager 1 is ongoing
Japanese government finally bids sayonara to the 3.5" floppy disk
We put salt in our tea so you don't have to
Exactly. The best way to improve a cuppa made with teabags is to pour it down the sink.
AIUI the original US thought was that, if you've 'stewed' your tea by leaving it too long (unlikely in the US, where I've never experienced water hotter than lukewarm), you can rescue it by adding a little salt to counteract the bitterness. But if I stew the tea, I just throw it away and make fresh, it's not as though a couple of teaspoons of tea will break the bank.
For the benefit of overseas readers - how to make a cuppa (it's not rocket science) - you will need:
A kettle; a teapot; some loose leaf tea (M&S Extra Strong for me); milk; cups or mugs for drinking from; sugar (no thanks, but optional).
1. Empty kettle and refill with sufficient fresh water to fill the teapot.
2. Bring to boil.
3. Fill the (empty) teapot.
4. Pour back into kettle and reboil.
5. Add a couple of teaspoons of tea to the teapot (mine's a 1l pot, if you're using a larger one scale up accordingly).
6. Pour on the **boiling** water, stir vigorously and leave for 6 minutes (timing can be adjusted for strength).
7. Add milk to the cups/mugs and pour through a strainer. Some will insist that milk must be added after the tea; I won't argue, but they're simply wrong :)
8. Enjoy!
The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response
Re: We need more articles like this one
Anyone involved in bidding for government work will know the answer - it involves long, complex RFIs demanding lots of meaningless tick-box qualifications, statements about DEI practices, etc. so that only large players can afford to bid, and smaller (often cheaper and more competent) organisations are effectively blocked. In the end, it's too often a choice between Fujitsu or Capita. And this applies far more widely than just IT projects.
US cities are going to struggle to green up their act by 2050
Re: An "easy" fix
In southern US (and southern Europe), PV can be useful, because there are more sunny days and peak output coincides with peak demand (for aircon). At temperate latitudes (northern US and northern Europe), PV panels will struggle over their useful life to repay the energy consumed during their manufacture - which, given they're mostly made in China, using energy derived from burning coal, means they do very little to reduce global CO2 emissions; though they're great for subsidy harvesting, and transferring money from the relatively poor to the relatively wealthy.
HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten
World's largest nuclear fusion reactor comes online in Japan
HP printer software turns up uninvited on Windows systems
Greenpeace calls out tech giants for carbon footprint fumble
FTX crypto-villain Sam Bankman-Fried convicted on all charges
One can feel some sympathy for individual investors taken in by this scammer. But large corporate investors? Was the "too good to be true", offshore-located multi-billion dollar scheme, run apparently on a spreadsheet not showing any red flags?
"Due diligence - we've heard of it!"
Mind you, I know of the CEO of a British insurer who bought a Spanish company from a guy he met in a bar there. Spoiler alert: it didn't end well.
Word turns 40: From 'new kid on the block' to 'I can't believe it's not bloatware'
IBM flags up NorthPole chip to scale AI – though it's still far from shipping
Cisco warns of critical flaw in Emergency Responder code
Doom developer John Carmack thinks artificial general intelligence is doable by 2030
Local governments aren't businesses – so why are they force-fed business software?
I'm no fan of Oracle, but I don't see why a council's needs for an ERP system differ hugely from those of a commercial enterprise. Brum's needs don't differ from those of a chain store more than those of a chain store differ from a construction contractor. Because accountancy rules are the same for all (debits still go in the column nearest the window).
Large commercial organisations are equally capable of screwing things up, but the difference is that when they do, heads (OK deputy heads) will roll. This never happens in government.