Posts by Anonymous Coward

Datacenter migration plan missed one vital detail: The leaky roof

Re: An exposed cinderblock ceiling?

Sounds like it could be block & beam construction. Perfectly within building regulations.

Update your Tesla now before the windows put your fingers in a pinch

If your "altogether" gets trapped in the window, you're definitely holding it wrong.

Bad UI killed the radio star

Re: My claim to fame...

And it should be the default, with an --actually-do-it parameter instead.

Keeping printers quiet broke disk drives, thanks to very fuzzy logic

Re: Wang

Careful you don't get the wong wang

Testing of Starlink internet under way in Antarctica

Re: The most important aspect is: lasers in frickin' space

How did they get the sharks up there?

WordPress-powered sites backdoored after FishPig suffers supply chain attack

Re: Ah, Wordpress

Chances are that even if the plugins implemented automatic updates, the plugin author wouldn't make any improvements to publish anyway.

Re: Ah, Wordpress

The issue isn't wordpress though. It's the plugins, which are so easy to publish that the authors don't need much skill and thus the code quality is sh*ahem* poor.

That also means that there's so many of them with relatively low usage that the code doesn't get analysed by people who know what they're doing. Popular plugins will get scrutinised, but not the other 99.9% of them.

Red Hat says staff can stay away from the office forever

Re: Keep it simple.

From the article...

> "Not being limited by location when hiring provides a much broader opportunity to attract and retain great associates"

Admittedly "great associates" is a novel way of spelling "cheap workers", but that's definitely more cost savings that the bean counters are factoring in.

FCC Commissioner demands review of Starlink rural broadband subsidies

Re: Quite Impressive

Or the order was placed 12 months prior and being 2-3 weeks was just the normal installation hiccups.

Musk seeks yet another excuse to get out of Twitter buyout: This time it's Mudge's severance check

Lawyers. They'll be first against the wall.

> "the Musk Parties third purported termination is invalid for the independent reason that Mr Musk and the other Musk Parties continue to knowingly, intentionally, willfully, and materially breach the Agreement." [Twitter lawyers]

So they're claiming that this accusation is invalid purely because Musk hasn't completed on the purchase yet??? No claim that the accusation itself is invalid???

Musk might even win if Twitter are using that logic.

[ still missing the Paris icon :-( ]

Chemical plant taken offline by the best one of all: C₈H₁₀N₄O₂

Always worth directing people to this optical illusion: https://xkcd.com/237/

Terminal downgrade saves the day after a client/server heist

Satellite tech

Sometime in the mid-2000s, we took on a client whose office had a fancy satellite internet connection. This was in the days of ADSL having patchy availability and dial-up still being popular.

I visited their office to do some work. Remarked how slow their internet connection was. "It's always been like that"

I noticed that their in-house server had a 14.4k fax modem attached to accommodate network-based faxing (advanced tech for the time/company) - I configured a dial-up connection on it, then set the server up as a router.

They were amazed at the speed difference.

I went back the following day with a 56k modem. They dumped the satellite service and soon went to bonded ISDN.

Underwater datacenter will open for business this year

Re: WTF

Yes, but if your cooling system is more efficient then you're generating less surplus heat, so the net effect is reduced heating.

surface-liquid-surface-sea is more efficient than surface-air-surface(AC)-liquid/gas(AC)-surface(AC)-air

No, no, no

It's currently up in the air, but they're hoping that they'll be successful and get things down in the water.

Japan to change laws that require use of floppy disks

Exactly. HTML entities exist for a reason. Instead of <blink> they just need to enter &lt;blink&gt;

Google Play to ban Android VPN apps from interfering with ads

I damn well hope so

Doctor gave patients the wrong test results due to 'printer problems'

Re: Photocopier challange

In fairness, the manual duplexing for 50 copies was probably faster - churn out 50 copies of one side, then 50 of the next rather than engaging the duplex unit 50 times and initialising 100 copies.

Tesla owner gets key fob chip implanted in his hand

Re: Why didn't he just hack...

> "I would imagine he'd chose a good one" [doctor]

I would imagine that he would choose a compliant one. It might cost a bit extra, but rich people don't care if it means they get what they want.

NASA's Space Launch System rocket is on track for August 29 liftoff

Really good news

I hope this works. Because once this has launched, the powers that be will finally grant SpaceX permission to launch starship, then we'll really be getting some progress.

US Army drone crashes hours ahead of breaking flight duration record

Re: 50 miles an hour straight down?

That was while it was at ~45000ft - the air is very thin up there so that's a believable fall rate to me. Commercial airlines descend at ~2000ft/min routinely and I've done more than that in a light aircraft (straight down).

Tesla Full Self-Driving 'fails' to notice child-sized objects in testing

Comparison

Are they going to compare these results to another car with cruise control and lane assist active, or is it purely someone's vendetta against tesla?

Electrical explosion at Google datacenter injures three

Re: Arc flash?

The datacentre looks to have been built next to a fairly major electrical plant... https://goo.gl/maps/TwbzespEtDxRfodj8

SpaceX demonstrates that it too can shower the Earth with debris

Re: Raising the odds?

The confusion is largely due to the fact that 1/3.1746 = 0.3150 which are confusingly similar numbers in scientific notation and a power of ten shift is easy to miss.

At the root of it, your calculation of "(1.43 * 10e-6) * (2.22 * 10e-8)" should actually be 1/(1.43 * 10e-6) * 1/(2.22 * 10e-8) as probabilities are expressed as a "1 in x chance" and that produces a chance of 1 in 31,500,031,500,031.5 (or 1 in 3.15*10¹³)... and as a probability, that's 1/(3.15*10¹³) = 3.1746*10^-14 or as a percentage (ie x100) 0.0000000000031746%

Re: Raising the odds?

Depends on whether you socialise with the type of people who are likely to mug you for a winning lottery ticket and who also have ready access to meteors*

(Obviously the pedant in me wants to say "extremely slim because they'll be meteorites by the time they're anywhere near you", but I won't because the other pedants will point out that you could be in a space vehicle passing through the atmosphere while holding said lottery ticket)

Apple ends corporate COVID mask mandate

Re: Can't they just tweak one of the employee phone apps...

Cocksuckers at least bring enjoyment to some people.

[speaking of which, where has the Paris icon gone???]

Google: We had to shut down a datacenter to save it during London’s heatwave

Re: Heat island

Farmland doesn't have to be arable. Fields of sheep, cows, pigs etc are less likely to attract flocks of birds.

Re: Heat island

Generally they'll want their DC as close as possible (in latency terms) to a major internet exchange, eg LINX.

Propagation delays happen, even in fibre (the speed of light is finite and in glass it's even slower) and that adds milliseconds to each packet.

Re: Move it up north

> "It's because they didn't have redundant cooling systems. That's really all it can be."

But they (in theory) have redundant datacentres instead - they're needed anyway, so might as well use the ability to failover between them.

In this case it turned out that the redundancy they thought they had wasn't as good as they thought it was.

BOFH: Selling the boss on a crypto startup

> "Or do the Brits need to grow stiff upper lips and start using the bastardized versions instead?"

*bastardised*

Chinese booster rocket tumbles back to Earth: 'Non-zero' chance of hitting populated area

Re: What, no nukes?

> maybe the odd extra house here and there

In my experience, those are absolutely fine. Even a few houses - 5 or 6 maybe. But developers want a minimum of 300 shitty houses to maximise profits and that's never popular with the locals.

Russian ChessBot breaks child opponent's finger

An EPO button would be quicker in that situation. The angle grinder would be primarily useful for revenge.

Outlook email users alerted to suspicious activity from Microsoft-owned IP address

> You'd think MS could manage to get email right

Why would you think that? They can't seem to get anything else right.

Russia fines Google $374 million for letting the truth about Ukraine be told

Re: If....

Nah, they could play with the Maps routing algorithm which could easily lead to massive amounts of congestion wherever they choose.

American Airlines reserves 50 flying taxis

Re: Greenwashing

Don't forget the manufacturing stage. That will consume a significant amount of energy that may not be particularly green.

Just because you failed doesn't mean you weren't right

Re: I don't understand.

Personally I would've put a cardboard box (or similar) out on the range - pretty obvious whether it was hit or not.

But the (dummy) munitions could still skid/bounce/shatter which can mask the point that they actually hit.

FYI: BMW puts heated seats, other features behind paywall

Re: Monthly?

Not in my car. Putting the AC on stops it from trying to regen the DPF, so my fuel consumption actually goes down.

I must sort out the DPF properly at some point...

Have you seen the price of A1 jet fuel? If you thought petrol was expensive, wait until you see how much the daily commute costs in one of those.

FBI and MI5 bosses: China cheats and steals at massive scale

> "setting up businesses in the US, only to turn around to find that the busyness (and the IP) suddenly does not belong to them anymore?"

What, like Apple stealing Samsung's rounded corners?

.

(tongue in cheek, but there is an element of truth behind it)

NASA delays SLS rollback due to concerns over rocky path to launchpad

If turning is such a problem, why didn't they build the VAB, tower and crawlerway in a straight line???

Microsoft teases Outlook Lite for Android

Re: Sounds like ...

[shudder]

I'm pretty sure that would go against the Geneva convention

NanoAvionics satellite pulls out GoPro to take stunning selfie over Earth

Clever

I like the way they've used a fisheye lens to give earth that 'round' look when we all know that it's actually flat.

Soviet-era tech could change the geothermal industry

Re: Blowback

It's OK, they're going to dig another hole to put the spoils in.

Misguided call for a 7-Zip boycott brings attention to FOSS archiving tools

Re: I’m waiting

Nah, 8 is so bad that they need to distance themselves from it and call the following release 10.

Or am I thinking of something else?

AWS sent edgy appliance to the ISS and it worked – just like all the other computers up there

Re: Desperation

"Blue Origins can't get anywhere near orbit, but finally Bezos has managed to get something up there"

Mars Express orbiter to get code update after 19 years

Re: Astounding

At that time, I would probably have used NT4 but maybe even Windows 2000 (it was a bit new then, but certainly better than 98 or the abomination of ME)

If you want to launch Starship from Texas, here's some homework, FAA tells SpaceX

Re: Aussie, Aussie, Aussie

But they want to be as close to the equator as possible, to give them the best range of orbital trajectories.

OVHcloud datacenter fire last year possibly due to water leak

Re: Ironic

> "The smart ones that used OVH are the ones that left. They were stuck with lost data and very limited to no recovery options"

I disagree. The smart ones had backups and BC plans in place that didn't involve the same provider as their primary system.

Re: Interesting article marred by dreadful time formatting

0800z in CEST is from hereon to be known as 1 kilominute.

Mars helicopter needs patch to fly again after sensor failure

That's true, but that was what the heater was for. They've now turned the thermostat down because of the shortage of power (and to see what breaks)

Elon Musk 'violated' Twitter NDA over bot-check sample size

Precision is essentially the number of digits used to report something. It has no relevance to how that thing was measured.

Accuracy is how close the measurement is to reality.

Resolution is how small the increments can be (what difference can be resolved).

So if you were to take a picture of something from a long distance, then measure that thing in the picture, the _resolution_ would be the pixel width - say 5cm. You could then report the size as 25.98632987469817cm which is incredibly _precise_ but also incredibly unlikely to be _accurate_.