If you don't care about down-voters, why do you care enough to tell us you don't care?
Posts by handle
869 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
Virgin Media router security flap follows weak password expose
Texas says 'howdy' to completely driverless robo-cars on its roads
Re: cyclists
Yep, it's known that cyclists are a difficult problem for autonomous vehicles. They sometimes behave like vehicles and sometimes like like pedestrians. It's difficult to work out which is the front and which the back. It's reckoned the only solution might be, as with pedestrians, to keep them segregated, chopping up communities even more with fenced-off roads.
Firefox 54 delivers sandboxes Mozilla's wanted since 2009
PC, Ethernet and tablet computer pioneer 'Chuck' Thacker passes
Vodafone to block its ads from appearing next to 'fake news'
Tech industry thumps Trump's rump over decision to leave Paris climate agreement
You'll get a kick out of this: Qualcomm patents the 'Internet of Shoes'
A nod to Douglas Adams is appropriate at this point, I feel.
Apple blocks comms-snooping malware
Ubuntu 17.04 beta FACT: It's what's on the inside that matters, not looks
Scottish court issues damages to couple over distress caused by neighbour's use of CCTV
Re: CCTV coverage, where is the line drawn?
@ Natasha Live:
"ICO has only has power when businesses are involved and not private citizens."
From the link so helpfully provided earlier: "The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) regulates and enforces the Data Protection Act (DPA) ... if your CCTV covers any areas beyond the boundaries of your property it will no longer be regarded as domestic processing and be exempt from the DPA."
"Also it is fine to record public areas such as the Queen's highways. This is how Google gets to drive their cars around and News gets to show busy streets, etc."
Haven't you noticed that Google Street View images don't move, have no time and date attached, and also have all personal information blurred out?
And what happens when someone enters the area where the professional recording system of which you boast has already started operating, so that they don't hear the announcement?
I think you need to do some more research before you find yourself in hot water, starting with the realisation that however pricey is your law firm in Leeds, the information they give is unlikely to trump that presented on a government website.
Robo-supercar hype biz Faraday Future has invented something – a new word for 'disrupt'
Android's Hover feature is a data HOOVER
Cynical Apple gouges UK with 20 per cent price hike
Ubuntu 16.10: Yakkety Yak... Unity 8's not wack
Re: "Unity 7 works just fine"
Confused - do the downvoters not know that there is an auto-hide option for the launcher, or do they just not believe me when I say that my launcher won't hide? It is worse than useless because with the auto-hide option, the launcher appears on top of maximised windows, hiding part of them; with the fixed launcher, maximised windows are sized to avoid it.
You should install smart meters even if they're dumb, says flack
Australia vs UK
@Pompous Git: I see that the base interest rate in Australia is currently 1.5%; in the UK it's 0.25%, making PV a correspondingly better investment compared with sticking your savings in a bank. And of course the tariff models are separate. But I didn't get PV just for financial reasons.
You also dis the technology on the grounds that it can raise your neighbours' voltage and blow their appliances. Yes, that might happen if there are two of you on the end of a long piece of damp string, but in my suburban setting it has no noticeable effect at all on the voltage, which I monitor at the most sensitive point - the inverter, as I have a low impedance supply. So you can't generalise, especially considering that the maximum power it has ever generated is about 3.5kW, which is scarcely more than a kettle. Putting on a kettle will reduce the voltage the same amount as full sun (with clouds around it, i.e. momentarily) will increase it. In addition, IIRC the distribution company has the right to refuse permission for you to connect if it thinks there is enough installed capacity in the area to cause an issue, but I would be interested to know how often this has happened, if ever.
You may not be aware that in the EU a simple fudge was made to harmonise the UK/IRL 240V with 220V elsewhere by mandating that all appliances must operate at 230V+6%-10%; this would not have happened if things would be upset too easily.
PS "MIssus"? How presumptuous!
Backwards-running meters
@Martin-73: "A standard twisty wheel with pointers meter will run backward during feed-in."
A standard twisty wheel with pointers meter which doesn't have a ratchet will run backwards, but as soon as you register your PV installation (which you have to if you want any generation tariff), your electricity company will be very keen to change it for an electronic one.
Incidentally, these dumb meters (or the one I have anyway) indicate on their displays if they have ever experienced reverse energy flow, presumably to detect fraud. The LED that flashes for every fraction of a kWh consumed also comes on steadily during periods of reverse energy flow.
Dying pensioners
@ledswinger: "Unless you dispute the official line on climate change, fuel poverty and excess winter deaths, then it is a simple matter of fact that all the eco-bling of wind turbines and PV saves polar bears, but kills pensioners."
Very smug little argument, but ignores the fact that the brokenness of the energy market means vastly inflated prices unless you religiously change supplier every year, which is just the sort of thing that the poor pensioners you are using as your emotional pawns are not going to do (just as they are not likely to take up green incentives such as insulation grants). Direct your ire at the big six rather than microgeneration, which they hate as it undermines their monopoly.
Still, I'm glad that you think it saves polar bears.
Exploding capacitors
@PNGuinn: Ooh, that might be fun!
Probably not. The inverter is in a steel case with a very chunky aluminium heat sink on the front, so it would require quite a major conflagration for it to get out. And the capacitors are quite likely just to fail to capacitate, rather than go out in a blaze of glory.
Re: Downvoted pv panels
Perhaps it's because I don't live in Australia that I never have to clean my solar panels, Pompous Git. Find it hard to believe by all means, but confirmation bias is a powerful thing, and judging by the unnecessary advice about working on roofs, it's not hard to guess your opinion on solar PV.
A replacement panel will have its own micro-inverter. They are a better than stringing panels in series because partial shading has a lesser effect, but 5 years ago they were not economical. The faulty panel can just be taken out of the string and and the existing inverter will work just fine with the remaining ones.
Re: Downvoted pv panels
"(especially taking into account ongoing costs such as maintenance, cleaning, etc)."
They don't need regular maintenance or cleaning or "etc", whatever that might be. I've had solar PV for 5 years now with no cleaning or maintenance whatsoever, no noticeable drop-off in performance, and my non ideally-situated 2.75kWp installation has generated more than 12MWh. From what I read, the capacitors in the inverter might die eventually, but so far so good.
Got to dash out for some rubber johnnies? Amazon has a button for that
Ford announces plans for mass production of self-driving cars by 2021
Re: It's nowhere near ready yet
"How are automated cars going to deal with those if they can miss a white lorry?"
Because for every widely-publicised incident like that, there are 100 non-newsworthy incidents of preventable collisions being caused by human drivers which would have been avoided by autonomous vehicles. You so eloquently described how you were misled in a similar situation; how do you even know that your average driver might not have crashed into that white lorry too?
English Uber alles in London taxis? No way, TfL – taxi app titan
Black cab dinosaurs
@astrax: "going for regular examinations (called "appearances") in which the examiner can ask for practically any road, cul-de-sac or point of interest in a 20 mile radius"
Why? Just why, nowadays? Because "the Uber drivers' SatNav fluffing mid journey"? Car breaking down is more likely.
Virgin signs up record ultrafast broadband subs
Re: "The proof is in the pudding"
I take your point, smartypants, but upload speed is becoming more important with our ever-increasing cloudiness, and I'm not sure this was anticipated when the specification of DOCSIS 3 was hammered out. According to the Wiki, they appear to be addressing that now with version 3.1+.
We're not talking about symmetric communication here - just slightly less blindingly asymmetric.
Violence, vandals and vomit: London's naughtiest tech Tube stations revealed
The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code
Samsung Note 7: Probably the best phone in the world. Yeah – you heard right
Samsung eyeballs new Note
Huawei P9 Plus: Leica-toting flagship gets a big brother
Barelling
"barrelling, for which there is no magic cure in a 7mm thin device"
Do you mean barrel distortion? There's an easy cure: reverse the distortion in software. Of course this results in non-uniform resolution, but is a technique much larger cameras employ.
PS I think you mean 64/128GB of flash memory, not RAM.
TP-Link fined $200k, told to be nice to wireless router tinkers after throwing a hissy fit
Avoiding Liverpool was the aim: All aboard the world's ONLY moving aqueduct
Excellent article
Thank you. However, while it may be the world's only swinging aqueduct, it isn't the only moving one. There is the much more modern Falkirk Wheel which is just as mind-boggling as it rotates in a vertical plane, without tipping the water out! (I guess though that you could argue that this isn't an aqueduct as it doesn't carry water across something!)