Posts by Carl W

Google meets the neighbors and gets both barrels over its new UK datacenter

Another Google DC is going in just up the road at North Weald Airfield

Jammin' on UK defence secretary's jet as Russia blamed for GPS interference

Re: Did not read the Times artice due to paywall, but ...

GPS receivers need to basically know where they are to work. Usually they assume they are in the position they were last switched off. If they acquire the satellites hundreds of miles from their last location while going at 600kts it will be very hard to lock on and download the almanac from the satellites. For sure, you can hot-start a GPS receiver with an INS but the Falcon might not have that capability.

Memory godboxes could offer relief from the RAMpocalypse

Perfect time for RAM doublers to come back.

UK.gov's DCMS to new CDIO: Migrate from Google to Microsoft, overhaul ERP, build a team

Re: But why?

I guess the requirements were written about 5 years ago before cloud sovereignty became an issue. And being central government I should imagine they will push on down that path regardless of any changes in the real world.

World's blandest man steps down from CEO job to spend more time in tastefully appointed home

Re: A bit of missed innovation with the iPhone

They also normalized the spending of £1000+ on a phone

UK government's Shared Services Strategy is entering the danger zone

Cluster names

These sound like team names from The Apprentice

UK copper fired after faking keyboard taps using photo frame

These things happen when over-zealous IT departments implement screensavers that kick in after 1 or 2 minutes and don't offer the option to change it. I've just been kicked off a Slack huddle twice because the screen saver kicked in. It's hardly a surprise that people don't press any keys when they're speaking or listening.

Royal Navy sharpens claws on Wildcat choppers with anti-drone Martlet missiles

Interesting choice of name

The Grumman Wildcat was known as the Martlet when it was in RN service

Martlet was also the Royal Navy name for the F4F, which the US called the Wildcat

'Fax virus' panicked a manager and sparked job-killing Reply-All incident

Reply-all

I do love a good reply-all e-mail storm:

"Please remove me from this list"

"Please everyone stop replying to all"

UK to roll out mandatory digital ID for right to work by 2029

Re: IDs..

They did get off the drawing board, you could pay £30 and get one. And some people did.

Can't see what functionality this adds over the employer checking your passport and NI number?

P2P payment service Zelle sued for enabling payment fraud hell

Zelle?

I'm surprised Zettle (now owned by Paypal) allowed them to use that name

DARPA’s Cylon raider autonomous fighter jet advances to next phase

Refusing a bombing run

Insert obligatory Dark Star reference here

UK buys time with £1.65B extension to G-Cloud framework

Re: more money for the big guys

Same, we ended up not bothering to renew. There seems to be either a misunderstanding about how to use G-Cloud or some other reluctance as the civil servants seem to prefer running a procurement. G-Cloud is supposed to be like a catalogue that you buy from, using the search query terms to narrow down the number of results you get to a reasonable number.

Airbus okays use of ‘Taxibot’ to tow planes to the runway

Virgin Atlantic tried this years ago, towing their 747s by the nosewheel to the runway hold point to save fuel. After a couple of weeks Boeing told them to stop doing it as the nose gear wasn't stressed for it.

Financial 'stretch' for UK to join Europe's Starlink rival, says minister

Doesn't the UK Govt own OneWeb? Don't hear about that much any more.

Trump's budget bill bankrolls $85M Space Shuttle shuffle

Re: Is it that difficult?

No way they landed a Concorde at London City. I think they landed it at Heathrow and put it on a barge as there are pics of it going past the Houses of Parliament.

Slapped wrists for Financial Conduct Authority staff who emailed work data home

This sort of behaviour is often the result of the employees being supplied IT kit that is so locked down that it makes work difficult or impossible (USB ports disabled, cannot print to a printer other than one in the office when WFH). By trying to make things more secure the employer ends up making thing less secure due to these workarounds.

Pidgin is back, so let's talk about why a local chat client matters

Skype?

Does Pidgin allow us to continue to use Skype without having to transition to Teams?

UK government's cloud strategy: Pay more, get less, blame vendor lock-in?

Re: Krasnov

Didn't we have UKCloud who went bust after HMG dropped them in favour of AWS?

Why is Big Tech hellbent on making AI opt-out?

Isn't this a breach of GDPR?

UK watchdog hints Voda-Three merger will likely pass

Lots to unpick

Vodafone and Three already do mast-sharing, but not with each other.

Vodafone and O2 have a joint venture called Cornerstone while EE and Three have a joint venture called MBNL.

'Hyperscale customer' to take massive datacenter site near London

Re: Another one?

Apparently the North Weald site has been leased back to the council. And the council are taking bookings to use the site for the next 2 years.

Tax helpline callers left on hold for nearly eight centuries

Am I missing something?

Surely if the simple queries can be dealt with via the website (meaning call volumes go down), by definition the more complex queries will be handled by the call centre agents and the average call duration will increase? Wasn't this anticipated?

Bank's struggle to replace Atos threw system back to dark ages

Re: IR35

Not even necessary to move overseas, as long as you work for an overseas client

Techies at Europe's biggest council have 8 weeks to pull finance reports from Oracle system

EY, KPMG, PwC

What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Would be nice if Oracle stepped in

Oracle's professional services team is actually quite small as they prefer you to use implementation partners.

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

Re: Bolted Horses

Presumably you have broadband so can access BBC iPlayer, ITVx, C4, My5, UKTV Play, etc.?

HMRC: UK techies' IR35 tax appeals could take years

Re: Dumb question...

This is exactly what I thought when the scheme was explained to me.

LG to offer subscriptions for appliances and televisions

Radio Rentals

Didnt' Radio Rentals get there first with this business model?

Multi-tasking blunder leaves UK tax digitization plans 3 years late, 5 times over budget

Re: Read chapter 6 of Ian Dunt's book "How Westminster Works ... and Why It Doesn't"

Exactly this. Apart from the civil servants who have found their level, everyone else is just passing through. If you get promoted a grade and then there is a vacancy anywhere in your department at that grade, you get moved on to that.

Telco giant Vodafone to cut 11,000 staff as part of its turnaround plan

Re: "it has earmarked “significant investment” for FY24 towards customer experience and branding"

Lovely, who wouldn't want to live at the Vodafone HQ? Particularly if it floods again.

Re: "it has earmarked “significant investment” for FY24 towards customer experience and branding"

Yes

Re: "it has earmarked “significant investment” for FY24 towards customer experience and branding"

Except in this case the HQ has been sold

UK to test Starlink satellite broadband for those hard to reach areas

What happened to OneWeb, which was bailed out by the UK Government? Most of their satellites have been launched.

UK government rolls out £3.6bn management consultancy framework amid scrutiny of rising external expertise spending

SMEs?

This is confusing. Some of those companies are SMEs and have been awarded contracts of hundreds of millions of pounds?

UK.gov awards seats on £2bn 'digital outcomes' framework to suppliers – one of which doesn't even have a website

this isn't how Digital Outcomes and Specialists works

There are thousands of companies allocated to each lot. I assume the ones in the contract notice are just randoms from the list.

Fintech biz Wirecard folds into insolvency like two pair against a flush. Good luck accessing your chip stack

FairFX too

FairFX services currently suspended too -- apparently they use Wirecard as a card issuer

From Brit telly presenter Eamonn Holmes to burning 5G towers in the Netherlands: Stupid week turns into stupid fortnight for radio standard

Re: The RF nutters

These are the same people who will complain that there is no mobile phone signal in their house if you take the antenna away.

Britain's courts lurch towards Skype and conference calls for trials as COVID-19 distancing kicks in

Re: https://jitsi.org/

8x8 acquired Jitsi about 18 months ago

I'll just clear down the database before break. What's the worst that could happen? It's a trial

Re: never trust a PM

8MB RAM presumably?

In the claws of a vulture: Nebra AnyBeam Laser Projector

Good price

Paid about the same for a portable LED 720p projector last year, with no frickin' laser beams. Runs Android so has Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. as apps.

Boom! Just like that the eSIM market emerges – and jolly useful it is too

Re: So how is an eSIM better

You could, for example, sign up for an Australian SIM by scanning a QR code on an advert at the baggage carousel.

Apple macOS Mojave: There's goth mode but developers will have to wait for the juicy stuff

Will not install on a 3TB Fusion drive that has a Bootcamp partition on it. Unless you want to destroy the Bootcamp partition.

She's arrived! HMS Queen Lizzie enters Portsmouth Naval Base

Doesn't the landing gear impact the ski jump at 150mph+ on every takeoff?

NASA plans seven-year trip to Jupiter – can we come with you, please?

Heading off to Jupiter?

The Trojans are 60 degrees ahead and behind Jupiter in its orbit, so a *long* way from Jupiter.

Stingy sapphire lens in Apple's iPhone 7 is as scratchy as glass

Is that a real person?

That guy sounds almost exactly like the "Tom" voice that macOS uses for dictation (which I think is provided by Nuance).

Maybe Apple's hardware is reviewing itself these days. Next it'll be interpreting attempts to switch it off as an attack and mobilizing the Skynet network.

Making us pay tax will DESTROY EUROPE, roars Apple's Tim Cook

Apparently, though, we voted to leave these truly independent 'well off' eurocrats to do what's right for the ordinary people of mainland Europe (and Ireland)