Posts by Duncan Macdonald

Sod 3G, that can go, but don't rush to turn off 2G, UK still needs it – report

On the other hand

Switching off 2G just as the smart meter installation rate passes 80% would be a good way to get rid of the smart meter craze!!

Note there are a large number of older phones (and tablets) that require 2G for calls and networking. In many areas of the UK 2G is the only available type of network. (Also a number of burglar alarm systems and fire alarm systems use SMS to call for help.)

Realistically 2G should not be disabled for at least 20 years with at least a 10 year countdown.

However much money the network operators may save will be outweighed more than 10 to 1 by the costs to 2G users that will need to buy new equipment.

We're free in 3... 2... 1! Amazon unhooks its last Oracle database, nothing breaks and life goes on

Re: More Unicorn Poop

Support - Oracle ??????

Proven track record in demanding ever more money from its victims (customers).

The very high cost of Oracle software was one of the main reasons for the rise of non-proprietary databases.

Chemists bitten by Python scripts: How different OSes produced different results during test number-crunching

Re: Language question - Two programs

I would be tempted to use 2 programs - the first to take the input file and extract the wanted data (still as hex text) into a second clean file and the second to do any required processing on the hex data. You said that you used FORTRAN in the past so use that for the numeric processing (the Z field in FORMAT handles hexadecimal) and INT*8 is 64 bit so will handle 42 bit numbers easily.

For the first program use whichever string processing language you are most familiar with (awk, Perl, SNOBOL etc (If you are a masochist then you could use TECO !!!)). Familiarity is probably more important than the precise language to reduce the learning curve.

Keep the intermediate file - a human examination will often show the problem when there are weird results.

Scrambling for cloud relevance, Oracle hires... 2,000? Yes, that sounds like a nice round number

Poison Cloud

Even Microsoft do not want to be tainted by the nasty reputation of Oracle.

The immovable object versus the unstoppable force: How the tech boys club remains exclusive

Motherhood

There is one major reason why there are fewer women than men going into STEM and that is is the evolutionary pressure to have children. Having a child has a major interference with education and working. For a woman to be sufficiently established in a STEM career to be able to take time off for children usually requires delaying having children till after 25. In non-technical fields, the education is often shorter and a break in the career to care for children does not have as much impact.

For larger companies (>200 employees) having a creche/day care center can help women back into their career with minimum disruption but few companies provide such a facility.

Planes, boats and autocrats: US Treasury Dept. slaps more sanctions on accused Russian troll funder

Re: So...

In the 2016 election Trump received 62,984,828 votes (46.1% of the votes cast) and Clinton received 65,853,514 votes (48.2% of the votes cast) but because of the bias to small states in the Electoral College system this became 304 (57%) votes for Trump and 227 (43%) for Clinton in the College.

As I said - the Republican party knows that it needs the Electoral College system to keep a chance of having the presidency so they would never agree to the system being replaced by a direct vote despite the fact the the original reasons for the Electoral College (unknown populations and poor communications) are no longer present.

Re: So...

The Electoral College was a way of dealing with unknown population counts and poor communications. At the time of the founding of the USA it was a pragmatic way of dealing with these problems. Now however the Electoral College serves as a way to give the low population states far more political power than their population merits. It effectively gives the Republican party a built in 5 to 10 percent advantage in a presidential election.

The Republican leadership and the leaders of the low population states will never allow this archaic fudge to be removed because their political power depends on it.

Intel unveils gen 2 Optane SCM, bellows: You Barlow Pass, as it unfurls roadmap

QLC - no thanks

Until QLC has been in use for years to build a reliability and lifetime database, I will not trust it for anything important. There are too few electrons/bit for me to be happy about using it for storage - it may be OK for caching use (eg on a webserver) where any corrupted data can be recovered from backing storage (HDD).

This flash is too slow. This DRAM is too small. This bowl of data is just right. It's SCM flavored

Not enough memory channels

The majority of CPUs do not have sufficient memory channels to make good use of SCM. Without being able to dedicate a memory channel to SCM, it is relegated to fast NVMe storage. (The AMD EPYC range is one of the few that can afford to sacrifice memory channels to SCM. One SCM memory channel would reduce the maximum DRAM on EPYC from 2 TB to 1.75TB per CPU.)

Another problem with SCM is that it is only effective for local storage (SCM and CPUs on a single motherboard) - serving the data on SCM over any sort of network negates its advantages. For a cloud server this implies that jobs using SCM cannot be easily migrated to another node.

Why worry about cost of banning certain Chinese comms providers? Fire Huawei, says analyst

Huh ?

So spend $3.5bn to replace the possibility of being spied upon by China with the certainty of being spied upon by the USA.

How much did Cisco pay this "analyst" to get this report ?

As for the USA having a leading position in 5G - ROFL.

What's on the itinerary today, Microsoft? Ah, Azure Scheduler's getting a stay of execution

Why delete the data ?

There will probably be many jobs that will need to be transferred after Azure Scheduler stops (people always forget things). What would it cost Microsoft to keep the data for a few months after the service closes? Leaving the data available for people having to do emergency fixes could get them some good publicity whereas deleting the data will get them bad publicity from firms that have problems as a result.

Switch about to get real: Openreach bod on the challenge of shuttering UK's copper phone lines

Re: Disaster mitigation?

None !!!

You do not think that vulnerable people come anywhere on the list of priorities for the people drawing up these plans do you ?

If some 80 year olds die at home because they cannot summon help, this is just regarded as a benefit - fewer people claiming pensions and needing NHS services,

Re: OK I'm biting..

Very few UPS systems can handle prolonged outages (multiple hours). The battery backup in the analogue phone adapter can handle up to 1 hour, however the problem is what happens if there is a power cut that happens at night when people are asleep. In the morning there would be no electricity and no way to call for help. With the analogue PSTN system phones would work for over a day in the absence of mains electricity (and much longer if the exchange has a backup generator).

Emergency calls

Looking at the spec for the analogue phone and network adapter, it shows a typical power consumption of 7.5 watts and the battery backup unit has 4 2000mAh 1.2v batteries. If the batteries are in perfect condition and fully charged they would only provide operation for a little over 1 hour. This is grossly insufficient. If the mains power fails at night while people are sleeping then when they wake up they will have no phone to summon help.

The battery backup unit needs to provide a minimum of 12 hours runtime - preferably 24 hours.

(For comparison the old analogue phones connected to the PSTN are backed up by the batteries at the exchange - usually good for over a day without mains power (huge batteries and/or a backup generator at the exchange).)

The interface unit will also consume about £10 worth of electricity per year which is an additional cost for the consumer.

For 2025 read 2075

When it comes to places like the Isle of Skye (same size as Greater London but a population of under 13,000), I will be VERY surprised if the change over is completed within a decade of the supposed end date. Running a fibre link for miles to serve a single house makes very little economic sense.

There is also a safety issue - the current PSTN system allows calls (including emergency calls) to be made even when mains power is unavailable as basic landline phones are powered by the exchange. How is the proposed new setup going to provide this service. (On the Isle of Skye as an example there are many spots without ANY mobile phone coverage so this cannot be the alternative.)

Eco-activists arrested by Brit cops after threatening to close Heathrow with drones

Re: Good work MET Police

Agreed - preferably for at least 5 years in prison.

Enjoy the holiday weekend, America? Well-rested? Good. Supermicro server boards can be remotely hijacked

How many ?

How many of the administrators of the vulnerable servers even know that the system has a Supermicro motherboard ?

How many of those even read security vulnerability notices ?

And how many of those know how to update firmware ?

And of those how many will bother ?

My guess is that at least 50% of the currently vulnerable systems will still be vulnerable in a years time !!!

Icon for the administrators who do not do the security updates ============>

Electric cars can't cut UK carbon emissions while only the wealthy can afford to own one

Re: Insurance costs higher?

Perhaps insurance companies are wary of the chance of battery pack fires. Also insurance costs tend to go up with the list price of a car so a £30k car will have a higher insurance cost than a £9k one.

One other thing to note about EVs - their range drops significantly if heating or air conditioning is used - the quoted ranges always assume no requirement for heating or cooling. (For a petrol or diesel car, heating has no effect on range as the heating comes from the waste heat from the motor.)

Re: A bit out of date?

The Nissan Leaf has a RRP starting at £31,440 - a Hyuandai i10 has a RRP starting at £9,091 - a difference of over £20,000 !! This difference will pay for a lot of petrol or diesel fuel. (At current prices and the mpg of an i10 it would be sufficient for about 140,000 miles!!)

The capital cost of a Nissan Leaf at over £30k is beyond the means of most car drivers in the UK even with hire purchase. Add to that the difficulty in charging for anyone living in a flat and the time taken to do a full charge (with a standard 13 amp socket it takes about 10 hours for a full charge of a Leaf vs 5 minutes to fill up an i10 at a petrol station). (Even with a high power charger (30 Amp 7kW) it takes over 4 hours for a full charge (and this sort of charger normally requires house wiring changes.))

In calm winter nights there is very little power available from renewables - the increased demand from a large fleet of EVs would require the building of several more conventional power stations (nuclear, coal or gas) and would probably require reinforcement of the National Grid in several locations.

More on that monster Cerebras AI chip, Xilinx touts 'world's largest' FPGA, and more

Re: AI Core

Each of the 84 dies on the monster chip is the same - and that would also be the case for any dies in the currently unused area. The dies in the currently unused area would not have the die to die interconnect wiring that is part of the monster chip. Individual dies for PCIe cards could also be produced from monster chips that have too many defects to produce a functional monster chip even with the built in redundancy.

Re: AI Core

Looking at the images from the Hot Chips presentation, there is room on the wafer for several individual dies as well as the 84 die monster. If the makers want to, they could make single dies alongside the monster for very little additional cost. An individual die should have a power consumption low enough (<200 Watts) to put on a PCIe card. A one die system should be enough for many smaller projects that could not afford the monster.

The story so far: How's that Autonomy High Court battle with HPE looking at half-time?

So far - what

To judge by the reports so far HPE has not proven anything (except that HPE had idiotic management). Unless Lynch & co do something stupid in court, HPE will lose this legal battle.

The only reason that HPE is in this legal battle is to try to save face for their management - even if they won, the actual amount of money they could get from Lynch would not come close to meeting their legal bills. By the time that HPE loses and has to pay its and Lynch's legal bills, millions of HPE's money will have been squandered - and a lot of lawyers will be laughing all the way to the bank.

One could make a reasonable case against HPE management for wasting shareholders assets on an unwinnable case.

Icon for what should happen to HPE senior management ====================>

Electric vehicles won't help UK meet emissions targets: Time to get out and walk, warn MPs

Re: 50 miles???

Try using solar power in the UK on a cloudy winters day!!!

Solar power makes sense in places like Arizona - not very effective in the UK even in summer and useless in UK winters.

The only practical way to have a lot of electric vehicles in the UK and reduce the carbon emissions is to build a lot of nuclear power stations to provide the energy for them. Given the number of NIMBYs in this country, the chance of this happening is near zero.

I get the impression that the politicians want the UK to be like soviet russia - only the rich and powerful could drive (or be driven) in good cars.

Re: legal target

Actually National Grid does not profit any more from "renewables" than from conventional generation of the same size and location. The groups that get excessive profits are the "green" energy suppliers that have managed to get contracts that ensure they are paid far more for electricity than conventional generators get. Offshore wind generators get over £110 per MWh, combined cycle gas turbines cost about £50 per MWh if they are not crippled by carbon taxes. Around 30% of a UK electricity consumers bill is due to using overpriced renewables and the carbon tax imposed on conventional generation.

Cisc-o-no! 'We’re being uninvited to bid' on China deals admits CEO as Middle Kingdom snub freaks out investors

Re: But then......

At the moment China is accepting US Treasury bonds that it knows are likely to be worthless some time in the future. Their reason is to prop up the US until China is no longer dependent on the US or the rest of the West for any vital supplies. Sometime in the next 20 to 30 years China will decide that propping up the US is no longer required. Given my age (67) I probably will not be around to see it but expect an economic recession in the West that makes the Great Depression seem like a mild cold versus Ebola.

Re: The Great Wall of "Thanks, but no thanks. We're good."

Sanity - US politicians ????

Social Security is already in the red in that the income to the US government for SS is less than the payout from SS - the US government spent all the money in the years that it was in surplus and its assets now consist of a pile of government IOU's. The net SS position (payouts - income) will get steadily worse over the coming years as more US citizens reach pensionable age. By the time that the SS funds are exhausted (expected in 2035) the government will have had to spend over $3 trillion more in SS payments than it receives in SS payroll taxes.

Increasing the SS payroll tax rate and removing the cap on the amount of income that is subject to the SS payroll taxes would be a way of avoiding the problem - however such a tax increase (especially one that would affect them) is anathema to many US politicians.

Re: The Great Wall of "Thanks, but no thanks. We're good."

China has a pressing need to become independent of the USA. Looking at the US Debt Clock and in particular at the unfunded liabilities makes it obvious that sooner or later the US will be unable to meet its Social Security (pensions for people in the UK) obligations. When this happens there will be millions of destitute people with guns and nothing left to lose. The resulting carnage will make the US Civil War seem like a friendly dance.

Got room for another probe up there, Google? Jobs sites ask EU antitrust tsar to look at how search giant ranks them

Re: I forsee another Google Auction in their future

Just cash on the barrelhead. What could be more in keeping with modern Silicon Valley ethics standards? Answer - undeclared cash in brown envelopes :-))

While US ban hit Huawei and inventory overload clipped Apple, Samsung quietly stole smartphone market share back in Q2

Xiaomi

Xiaomi had the best percentage increase - and as their products are generally considerably cheaper than equivalent Samsung phones they could become a challenge to Samsung's dominance of the smartphone market.

Let's see what the sweet, kind, new Microsoft that everyone loves is up to. Ah yes, forcing more Office home users into annual subscriptions

Use LibreOffice instead

LibreOffice is in many respects equal to or better than MS Office and for the typical home user with only basic documents and simple spreadsheets is more than good enough. (LO is also better than MS Office for reading a number of MS Office documents as MSO often seems to have difficulty reading documents from different versions.)

Given that the price of LibreOffice is far lower than MS Office, for most users LibreOffice is by far the better choice.

Science and engineering hit worst as Euroboffins do a little Brexit of their own from British universities

Re: Well, you're leaving

After a hard Brexit Eu citizens in this county would only have the rights that the UK government was prepared to give them.

A simple possibility - working for the NHS or paying UK income tax at the time of the Brexit referendum - 5 year work visa with the possibility of exchanging EU citizenship for UK citizenship, all other EU citizens - 12 month tourist visa.

Very easy to determine eligibility for the work visa with these rules.

Pentagon makes case for Return of the JEDI: There's only one cloud biz that can do the job and it starts with an A (or rhymes with loft)

If they chose Oracle

Then the bill would probably end up at $100 billion not $10 billion.

How powerful are Russian hackers? One new law could transform global crime operations

Criminal VPN's ?

How difficult will it be for them to set up VPNs licensed by the Russian government on the understanding that they are only used to target the West ?

Side-splitting bulging batts, borked Wi-Fi... So, how's that Surface slab working out for you?

Re: 1 year warranty? I don't think so...

Agreed - the t-shirt will last longer :-))

Microsoft hikes cost of licensing its software on rival public clouds, introduces Azure 'Dedicated' Hosts

Re: $106k over three years

There are only 3 valid reasons for using "the cloud"

1) Web server if there is insufficient bandwidth available to company premises.

2) Short term peaks (under 3 months)

3) Keeping developers well away from live systems

For almost all other use cases, it will be cheaper to use own hardware. Try pricing the cost of a cloud service vs the cost of on site hardware before using any cloud service - you may be surprised at how few months it takes before the on site hardware is cheaper.

Another rewrite for 737 Max software as cosmic bit-flipping tests glitch out systems – report

Re: That trade war is going to bite them now..

If the testing is thorough then it could add years (not months) and require full redesign with proper redundancy (at least 3 active computers with voting) and full manual override capability. (The trim wheels should have a manual power assist so that the pilots do not need to be world class strongmen to operate them.)

Requiring pilots to have full type certification on the 737 Max 8 as it differs from previous 737s would also be nasty for Boeing.

Icon for what should happen to Boeing senior management ===============>

Trump continues on the warpath: Now US tariffs cover nearly everything arriving from China

Re: restriction on exports of rare earth materials

The correct thing to do is to restrict the exports of rare earth minerals until the US mines are nearly operational - then allow the supply to resume. This would cost the US miners a lot of money and make them very reluctant to compete with China in future.

As far as blacklisting goes - a simple one - make it known to airlines that the 737 Max 8 will not be permitted to fly over China (and possibly its allies) until a full aircraft certification has been done by China (no grandfathered certificates from previous 737's and no trust in any FAA certification). (Russia might go along with China in this action which would make the 737 Max 8 unusable by many airlines.)

Pi in the sky as ESA starts testing encrypted comms on International Space Station

Old technology

Early PROMS were very radiation resistant - (the structures were far bigger than current devices and used blown fuse technology - the SN54S473 had the grand total of 4k bits (512bytes!!) in a 20 pin DIL package). If they can still be obtained then they could be used to store multiple copies of the keys each with a checksum.

Get ready for a literal waiting list for European IPv4 addresses. And no jumping the line

IPv6 was designed by theorists

IF IPv6 had been designed by engineers - not theorists then it would have been a simple extension of IPv4 with a longer address field and all IPv4 addresses would be directly mapped to a (small) subset of the IPv6 address range. If this had been done then IPv6 would have been widely accepted many years ago.

Do NOT let theorists be in charge of DESIGN - leave that to engineers.

It's official: Deploying Facebook's 'Like' button on your website makes you a joint data slurper

Re: modern Internet

I use both NoScript and AdBlockPlus - both are needed. (Some sites do not work with AdBlockPlus alone as scripts check for the presence of ad blockers and disable the use of the site if detected - NoScript stops the detection of the ad blockers. )

With the exception of a few sites such as eBay for which JavaScript is necessary - if a site requires Javascript for browsing then I will not use it.

Disabling JavaScript also stops a large proportion of the malicious content on the internet from doing damage.

Re: No f in button?

Disabling Javascript is a necessity on most websites. Even ignoring the privacy implications, enabling Javascript allows a lot of unwanted ads to run. NoScript and AdBlockPlus (or equivalents) are requirements for sane use of the internet.

Meet the super-speedy white dwarf binary system that's going to grav-wave our world

Supernova ?

When the two merge will it trigger a supernova explosion? One of the causes for a type 1a supernova explosion is thought to be the merge of two white dwarf stars.

Icon for the effect ==================>

Just add water: Efficient Energy’s HFC-free chillers arrive in the UK

Re: What is the efficiency ?

Agreed - as the required final temperatures is well above freezing using chilled water inside the data center is the best approach. (Even better if the racks have built in cold water channels), Large quantities of ammonia (or most other refrigerants) are best kept outside where a leak is less of a problem. A leak on a chilled water line is less of a problem and cheaper to fix than a leak of any refrigerant gas.

What is the efficiency ?

Unless the efficiency at least matches conventional cooling systems then there is no point to these units. There are already refrigerants with low or zero global warming potential that are suitable for industrial use (eg ammonia).

Checkmate, Qualcomm: Apple in billion-dollar bid to gobble Intel’s 5G modem blueprints, staff – new claim

Is it worth the cost ?

One billion now - probably at least the same again in development costs to get a 5G modem that matches Qualcomm. Modems derived from the Intel technology would probably not make it into Apple phones before 2022. Is the cost of the Qualcomm modems high enough to make this cost worthwhile.

There is also a question - how many of the top designers left Intel when they announced that they were exiting the modem business?

You'll never guess what US mad lads Throwflame have strapped to a drone (clue: it does exactly what it says on the tin)

Rocket launcher

In WW2 a Piper Cub was fitted with 6 bazookas and used for anti armor attacks. Using a disposable launcher it should be possible to use the OG-7V or the PG-7VL warheads (normally used with the RPG-7) while only needing a 10lb payload capability.

Icon for the effect on the target ===============>

Re: The numbers don't add up...

Americans have fine maths skills due to their superb education system (/sarc)

Oh, lovely, a bipartisan election hack alert law bill for Mitch McConnell to feed into the shredder

Honest ?

No surprise that the top Republicans do not want honest elections. (See the many Diebold voting machines articles for more details of the "oh so good" election machines - and note that the company was a major Republican party supporter.)

Facebook and Max Schrems back in court again, both pissed off at Ireland's data regulator

Irish Data Protection Commission

Should be renamed as the Irish Data Do Nothing Commission.

Have they ever decided against data transfers out of europe ?

Their entire game plan seems to be "kick the complaints around until the complainers die of old age".

Years late to the SMB1-killing party, Samba finally dumps the unsafe file-sharing protocol version by default

Still available where needed

As some embedded systems use SMB1 it is reasonable for Samba to still have it available for those cases. Having it off by default makes good sense.

(Some embedded systems still use W95 or W98 - often with long lost source code so updating them to newer more secure protocols is not practical.)