Don’t you know what the S in STEM stands for?
Posts by Fred Dibnah
651 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Oct 2008
UK civil servants – hopefully including those spending billions on tech – to skill up in STEM
Largest local government body in Europe goes under amid Oracle disaster
UK flights disrupted by 'technical issue' with air traffic computer system
NASA still serious about astronauts living it up on Moon space station in 2028
Tesla knew Autopilot weakness killed a driver – and didn't fix it, engineers claim
Re: Risk tolerance
My car has 'smart' cruise control which works well on motorways etc., but it behaves like a learner driver when coming up behind a slower vehicle. It brakes smoothly but far, far later than I would, so I usually hit the brakes long before the car has reacted.
A friend has a similar system in his car and he uses it on all types of roads, which is terrifying.
Cumbrian Police accidentally publish all officers' details online
Keeping salaries private between the company and each employee gives all the power to the employer. It allows them to underpay people who are not strong negotiators and/or not friends with their boss, and unless those people are willing (and able) to up sticks and move employer, they may never know they are underpaid.
I think it's a generational thing - in my (boomer) generation hardly anyone is prepared to say what they earn, whereas my kids' generation are quite open about it.
If someone ‘deservedly gets paid more’ the onus would be on the employer to demonstrate why they were more deserving. As I said earlier, without transparency the employer can reward people based on criteria which have nothing to do with ability or performance.
I suggested that salaries are visible only within the company, not because I see a problem with transparency but because that’s where direct comparison is most relevant. Pay across companies and sectors could also be compared with anonymised data.
I’ve always thought all the salaries of a company’s employees should by law be visible to everyone within that company (and nowhere else). At the moment only the employer has the full picture.
As you discovered, it would highlight discrepancies and would discourage the employer from treating one person better than another based on sex, race, old school, or whether they are/are not golf buddies.
Cruise self-driving taxi gets wheels stuck in wet cement
Orkney islands look to drones to streamline mail deliveries
I call greenwashing on this.
"Using a fully electric drone supports Royal Mail's continued drive to reduce emissions associated with our operations, whilst connecting the island communities we deliver to."
"By leveraging drone technology, we are revolutionising mail services in remote communities, providing more efficient and timely delivery, and helping to reduce the requirement for emissions-producing vehicles."
So instead of piggybacking onto the existing ferry services which will continue to run, they are setting up a completely separate means of transporting letters and parcels. This isn't about "reducing emissions", it's about money.
Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable
Re: Poor design in my opinion
I’m not sure I’d want to brag that I’d spent £10k on an interconnect! It brings this to mind:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XbUF0aXHLhw
It’s interesting to note that studios use good quality cables, but eschew the magic earthing boxes & other nonsense so beloved in the hi-fi world.
Will Flatpak and Snap replace desktop Linux native apps?
Dyson moans about state of UK science and tech, forgets to suck up his own mess
Boffins think they've decoded mysterious 819-day Mayan calendar
SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball
Re: Today's SpaceX Success
All the points you make are true.
However, the obvious comparison to this is Saturn V, and a search for 'Saturn V failure' only brings up results of 'The Day the Saturn V Almost Failed: 50 Years Since Apollo 6' and similar.
The Saturn engineers were surely no smarter than SpaceX's, so what is the reason for the difference in results?
I'm in my 60s so I admit a bias towards the old stuff that, you know, went to the moon and all that.
Today's old folks set to smash through longevity records
Re: Sshhhhh!!!!!
Life expectancy from birth has fallen slightly in recent years for men, and is static for women. Another source:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/bulletins/nationallifetablesunitedkingdom/2018to2020
“Life expectancy at birth in the UK in 2018 to 2020 was 79.0 years for males and 82.9 years for females; this represents a fall of 7.0 weeks for males and almost no change for females (a slight increase of 0.5 weeks) from the latest non-overlapping period of 2015 to 2017.”
Microsoft promises it's made Teams less confusing and resource hungry
The most bizarre online replacement items in your delivered shopping?
Acer pedals into e-cycle market with AI and big data in its basket
UK watchdog still not ruled on Openreach wholesale fiber discounts
Reg fashion: Here's what the well-dressed astronaut will wear on the Moon in 2025
Hubble images photobombed by space hardware on the up
Ubuntu Advantage is being wired deeper into the distro
It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system
Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up
Google datacenters use 'a quarter of all water' in one US city

Meanwhile..
“In the UK, Thames Water, which serves parts of London and the Thames Valley, announced earlier this year that it has begun efforts to try and quantify how much water is being used by datacenters within its area of coverage, and said it wanted to work with operators to reduce their overall water usage.”
Water meters.
You’re welcome.
Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison
UK facing electricity supply woes after nuclear power stations shut, MPs told
Children should have separate sections in social media sites, says UK coroner
USB-C iPhone, anyone? EU finalizes charging standard rule
Don't want to get run over by a Ford car? There's a Bluetooth app for that
Re: Ford's solution to their unsafe drivers/vehicles is for potential victims to run an app
A couple of years back Trek announced that they were working with Ford to fit beacons to their bikes, and this sounds like a development of that. At that point I crossed Trek off my list of companies I will buy a bike from.
Seems like Ford don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘autonomous’.
Musk seeks yet another excuse to get out of Twitter buyout: This time it's Mudge's severance check
Man wins competition with AI-generated artwork – and some people aren't happy
Enough with the notifications! Focus Assist will shut them u… 'But I'm too important!'
UK immigration systems delayed by extra Ukraine visa work

Re: A hack
@codejunky
You can continue to reply in your patronising tone ("hard of reading" etc) if you like, but as I already said, this discussion is about people migrating of their own free will. I'm not going further down your rabbit hole.
In most respects el Reg is a much more civilised forum than Twitter, but now and again I dearly wish it had a block button.
Re: A hack
There is no 'illegal' way to travel to the UK, no matter what the mode of transport. Anyone travelling here has the right under international law to claim asylum, and only if that claim is rejected do they become an 'illegal' as you so eloquently describe them.
To pre-empt you telling us that they could claim asylum in France: under international law, someone can claim asylum in the country of their choice.
Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
"The headline talks about electrical engineers, then the article goes on to talk about electronic engineers. They are not the same thing."
Indeed, although the IET muddies the waters - I am an electronics graduate and work in electronic engineering, yet according to the IET I am a Chartered Electrical Engineer.
BT strikes to start this month, 40,000 workers to down tools

Re: Go for it
When I sit in my office there's very little risk of someone jumping off a bridge onto my desk.
This driverless trains nonsense comes up again and again. There's a reason why they have only happened in (mostly) light rail, and that's because it's really hard to do safely in tunnels and/or at high speed. If it was easy, train companies would have done it years ago.