Posts by Jim Whitaker

SpaceX claims another Starship success, but fumbles the catch

Re: Huge progress?

"fictitious", I think.

Academic papers yanked after authors found to have used unlicensed software

Restitution?

I wonder if the journal would (re-) publish the article if the authors paid for a licence for the software in question?

Skyscraper-high sewage plume erupts in Moscow

Don't let United Utilities see this or they will be jealous!

NHS drops another billion on tech in the hope of finally going digital

Re: Place your bets...

I was once involved with an NHS project to put a mobile tablet into service for a domiciliary activity. The project was floundering a bit and when I pushed for an answer, it became apparent that "Ask them what they want, then give them what they need" was the essential problem. Because, of course, they asked a number of different people "what they wanted" and of course they got as many different answers as people and those answers were sometimes incompatible; indeed diametrically opposed. I moved on before the project came to a conclusion!

Kelsey Hightower: If governments rely on FOSS, they should fund it

King Log or King Stork?

If they fund it, they own it. Do you really want that? Be careful what you wish for.

Starlink's new satellites emit 30x more radio interference than before, drowning cosmic signals

Genies and bottles

Just how do you think this genie is going to be put back in the bottle? I feel sorry for astronomers but the rest of us are likely to see only benefits.

Increased expectations

Maybe but other factors will come into play, principally (I would argue) increasing expectations. An example from my own experience. Last week I was out on an event which takes place in the depths of rural, forested areas. Mobile phone coverage, including any data, is nil. For the first time, the reporting point were were co-located with, had a Starlink terminal positioned alongside. Logging in to the wi-fi that setup gave us phone and data coverage about as good as sitting at home with fibre to the premises. Now I am, mentally at least, going to judge any event by whether it has set up the same level of connectivity.

Feds urge 3D printing industry to end DIY machine guns

Re: Dubious Conversions

And my experience with this problem was a .22 target pistol. Fortunately good range discipline prevented any damage. And the armourer said: " yes , it does that sometimes"!

A simple remedy

Of course that will work.

31.5M invoices, contracts, patient consent forms, and more exposed to the internet

I'm guessing this is in America somewhere?

Body of IT tycoon Mike Lynch recovered after superyacht sinks

Sad loss of a man who was both important and successful. Poignant that this was a celebration and his daughter died with him leaving wife/mother behind.

Plane tracker app FlightAware admits user data exposed for years

They can't **need** an SSN since I don't have one (British) but do have a subscription. Why are they storing passwords? And I had no mention of an Equifax subscription in the email.

Google is a monopoly. The fix isn't obvious

Google search and Chrome work pretty well for me. Just leave them alone. Other search engines do not work as well for me. By all means do what was done to IE and don't allow Google search/Chrome to be the default browser at point of sale.

Palo Alto Networks execs apologize for 'hostesses' dressed as lamps at Black Hat booth

Re: "tone deaf marketing"

As much as 50%? You are very generous. I always heard "98% of advertising spend is wasted, the trick is to find that 2%."

UK Royal Mint mining PCBs for precious metals in e-waste recovery effort

Re: Nothing happens quickly

Generally I agree, but we have sent a few thugs to prison quite quickly over the last few days.

Europe's largest council could face £12M manual audit bill after Oracle project disaster

Re: how different can councils be

You suggest this against a background where our brand-new, sparkly government is spouting lots of nonsense about further devolution of powers to English regions. Given how well that is working in Scotland and Wales, I can really see that being a good thing. - NOT.

HP to discontinue online-only e-series LaserJet amid user gripes

I've got a 20+ year old HP Laserjet. Works just fine and toner appears to be available on EBay at very sensible prices. B&W so missing out on any colour printing. I've always thought that inkjet printing on an occasional basis was the swift route to frustration and hate. Don't know what I will do when this printer dies. :-(

Row erupts over data sharing function in UK doctor software

The BMA>

"prestigious" - Really? It's a trade union and one allowed to get away with murder, IMHO.

UK and US cops band together to tackle Qilin's ransomware shakedowns

Not really the sort of problem best dealt with by conventional police. SIS and CIA much better suited to this problem.

Julian Assange to go free in guilty plea deal with US

Nasty piece of work; good riddance.

Since joining NATO, Sweden claims Russia has been borking Nordic satellites

Better to find out now when counter measures can be developed than on the outbreak of something more acute.

Study finds 268% higher failure rates for Agile software projects

"One standout statistic was that projects with clear requirements documented before development started were 97 percent more likely to succeed." That's such a surprise.

UK law gives green light to self-driving cars from 2026

Re: UK self driving car

No, that's not level 4.

The article above says: ". . . the act does have a few tricks up its sleeve, notably making it clear that liability for a vehicle will not lie with the driver when it is in self-driving mode.

The UK's Department for Transport said: "Companies will have ongoing obligations to keep their vehicles safe and ensure that they continue to drive in accordance with British laws."

So no liability for occupier, "driver" or owner.

Uncle Sam to inject $50M into auto-patcher for hospital IT

Re: How is this going to work then?

"Who comes up with these stupid ideas?" I would know them as "Government".

UK public voice fear over security in NHS data systems

Re: fair and open competition

But there was for the FDP.

Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names

Sounds like a simple data type choice error. Change that and improve data entry validation. Bingo. (Oh and then find and sack the idiots who took the casual route instead.)

Razer made to pay $1.2M over 'N95' face mask that wasn't

"and some people might have thought it cool" And the same people deserve to be fooled.

Vernor Vinge, first author to describe cyberspace and 'The Singularity,' dies at 79

Re: Fire Upon the Deep - spoilers

Now that description is wrong by several dozen orders of magnitude.

Britain enters period of mourning as Greggs unable to process payments

Greggs not posh enough for the author then?

The whole tone of this piece was a bit whiney. You may feel yourselves a bit above Greggs but nobody asked you to flaunt your (presumed) superiority.

Climate change means beer made from sewer water, says North Carolina brewery

Or now.

Re: "Climate change means beer made from sewer water"

That's the Australian model, isn't it?

Boeing paper trail goes cold over door plug blowout

Real information and professional insight

If you are looking for accurate and insightful information, try these two YouTube channels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnFzT6aUehg&ab_channel=blancolirio and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FcyvFfHsjQ&t=720s&ab_channel=TheBoeing737TechnicalChannel

World-plus-dog booted out of Facebook, Instagram, Threads

Shrug.

NASA's satellite pit stop project runs out of gas

New approach needed

Now give the task to SpaceX.

Dumping us into ad tier of Prime Video when we paid for ad-free is 'unfair' – lawsuit

Re: They'll reap what they sow

"Didn't watch "Good Omens" until it came out on (discounted) dvd - I really liked the casting but still preferred the book."

I normally have a belief that the film version of a book is worse than the book. Worse, often much, much worse. Good Omens is, for me, an exception to that rule. Indeed I just started last night on about the third watching on Prime.

Re: Question is...

Come on AdBlock, do your stuff!

When red flags are just office decoration: Edinburgh Uni's Oracle IT disaster

"Oracle IT disaster". That headline must be in standing type at so many publications.

Alaska Airlines' door-dropping flight was missing bolts

Re: "poorly drilled rivet holes"

If you read many air incident reports, you will find quite a few where the CVR has been overwritten in much the same way. Far be it from me to speculate why trade unions have argued against much longer recording durations.

'Exemplar' digital hospitals trust hit by multiple tech-related traumas

"NHS administrators tend to regard electronic records as supporting the NHS internal market and a source of lucrative data that can be commercially exploited. Concern about patient wellbeing is well down the list"

Speaking as an ex-NHS (interim) manager, I think you do us a disservice by assuming that approach. What I saw in colleagues would not support in any way your assessment.

Re: "staff [...] had to complete a duplicate entry of records [...] on two electronic platforms"

And a KVM is only applying a sticking plaster to a gaping wound.

FBI confirms it issued remote kill command to blow out Volt Typhoon's botnet

How many people, on reading this, have gone and power cycled their old router?

Boeing goes boing: 757 loses a wheel while taxiing down the runway

Re: click bait

It is reasonably clear from authoritative sources that it was a wheel which fell off. What matters is accuracy in reporting. If a news source can't copy and paste reliably and then sub-edit accurately, what are the other errors in what is being said?

Tech billionaires ask Californians to give new utopian city their blessing

An archology in the making?

Oath of Fealty is a 1981 novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and I'm surprised to be the first to draw the parallel.

Google to start third-party cookie cull for 30 million Chrome users

Re: Only stupid people use google crome

I'm not sure that you either convince or educate people by insulting them.

You don't get what you don't pay for, but nobody is paid enough to be abused

Spelling mistake

Oh dear; you clearly are not screening your readers carefully enough.

IT sent the intern to sort out the nasty VP who was too important to bother with backups

So this was an important ($$$$) company who thought that backups were something you left end-users to do? I presume they are bust or selling vegetables now.

Rhysida ransomware gang: We attacked the British Library

They get kept for as long as is necessary. The method of having a "trusted" person in your organisation have sight of the relevant documents and for them then to record "conditions met" is attractive. Attractive, that is, until the relevant law enforcement bodies rock up on your doorstep and start asking difficult questions.

Control Altman delete: OpenAI fires CEO, chairman quits

Shortly afterwards:

And about ten minutes later, he was hired by Microsoft.

It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

UK legal position

I wonder what the Information Commissioner would make of this issue?