Posts by AndrueC

How do you ascertain user acceptability if you keep killing off the users?

Re: accidental aerial food delivery!

I had an incident with a dessert once at a party. I ran back to my chair carrying it and tripped over a guy wire. It was a trifle embarrassing.

Canada's .ca supremo in hot water after cyber-smut stash allegedly found on his work Mac ‒ and three IT bods fired

Re: Do you think

Obligatory Dilbert.

Uncle Sam challenged in court for slurping social media info on 'millions' of visa applicants

Re: And for those with NO social media accounts

If they check me out they'll find no social media but membership of several online forums. Most are innocuous enough but membership of DigitalSpy and TheRegister forums might result in me being taken aside for a 'chat' :)

UK parcel firm Yodel plugs tracking app's random yaps about where on map to snap up strangers' tat

Re: "we can confirm that it is now resolved"

That is bad. I do hope that it has been effectively dealt with.

Absolutely. Some PR wonk has issued a bland response which acknowledges that something has changed whilst alluding only tangentially to the problem and certainly without admitting any kind of corporate blame for the problem.

This appears to be what Big Business(tm) considers to be 'effectively dealing with it'.

But rest assured - they take security seriously.

Explain yourself, mister: Fresh efforts at Google to understand why an AI system says yes or no

Re: Applying Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics to corporations

Asimov had one view point. Frank Herbert had another.

"In the future, mankind has tried to develop artificial intelligence, succeeding only once, and then disastrously. A transmission from the project site on an island in the Puget Sound, "rogue consciousness!", was followed by slaughter and destruction, culminating in the island vanishing from the face of the earth."

..and before you know it you have a Jesus Incident :-/

I don't know if we'll ever produce true AI but the idea both amazes and scares me in equal measure.

No wonder Bezos wants to move industry into orbit: In space, no one can hear you* scream

Re: Not a new idea

One - the cost of setting up a robust sustainable ecosystem in space would be so great we'd probably deplete the Earth's resources just doing it.

Why would we deplete the Earth's resources? There are far more resources in space and once you've established your basic mining technology it's easy to get them. You don't mine Earth to build space colonies. You mine space to build space colonies and eventually you'll be sending stuff back down to the poor saps still stuck at the bottom of a gravity well.

Consider the term gravity well. We're currently stuck down here, with the whole universe out there. Sure it makes for a great nursery for primitive lifeforms but we are rapidly outgrowing it.

"The more thoroughly we control our environment, the more dangerous it is to forget it".

That I agree with. Probably that'll be the biggest long term risks. Human civilisations have collapsed in the past and will do so again. The one advantage a natural biosphere has is that a civilisation that collapses can still normally breath and grow food even if it forgets how to generate electricity.

One of my favourite science-fiction stories is The Outcasts of Heaven's Belt which covers this scenario. It's a short read but atmospheric and thought provoking.

Re: "Nothing better".

I favour some kind of launch loop. There's a few materials issues to resolve but it seems a clean and (as long as it doesn't fail) fairly safe way of doing it.

Or we could do the even more sensible thing and migrate human civilisation into space. Earth could then become a leisure world or perhaps allowed to lie fallow and recover, perhaps one day in the distant future spawning another intelligence.

Christmas in tatters for Nottinghamshire tots after mayor tells them Santa's too busy

Re: So much for commentard being enlightened here...

If we take the time to read the entire article we miss our chance to be the first to comment.

Gospel according to HPE: And lo, on the 32,768th hour did thy SSD give up the ghost

My first ever SSD - a Kingston unit - had a similar issue. In that case the problem manifested as the drive 'dying' every hour after approximately a year's worth of service. I was one of the early victims because I was using it in a mail server which ran 24/7/52 and it started dying roughly a year after I installed it. Luckily in that case the solution was to apply a firmware fix. No data was lost and the SSD continued to provide good service until it was replaced as part of a server upgrade.

Halfords invents radio signals that don't travel at the speed of light

Re: Definition

So there!

Re: If DAB is faster than FM

Seems reasonable. I bet a lot of things are better when you're at least a 100 miles from Droitwich.

Close the windows, it's coming through the walls: Copper Cthulu invades Dabbsy's living room

You missed an item out of your kitchen list. Wet dishcloth left in the sink. Seriously - what's so difficult about giving it a wring then leaving it on the draining area?

It's going to be infested with bacteria anyway but at least if you wring it out there might not be quite as many and it won't be so nasty to pick up :-/

Orange is the new green: Nigeria scammer bags $1m while operating behind bars

Obligatory Dilbert.

Internet world despairs as non-profit .org sold for $$$$ to private equity firm, price caps axed

Re: FOIA legislation

You already have the legal right to ask to view anything you want. It's just that - unlike governments - companies have the right to refuse your request without explanation. And that's the way it should be. Companies should be able to keep things to themselves. A lot of things are commercially sensitive and would damage the company's competitiveness if made public.

Of course if the enquiry is being made by the authorities using a valid warrant then it's another matter.

Labour: Free British broadband for country if we win general election

This simply isn't true, unbundled providers exist pretty much everwhere in the country and have their own equipment in the cabinet.

No, they don't. Some of them have their own equipment in the exchanges (and for ADSL that will include a DSLAM) but all the equipment in the new VDSL/G.FAST cabinets belongs to openreach. The LLUOs made it clear that they couldn't justify adding their own equipment to street-side cabinets.

So everyone with a VDSL or G.FAST connection is using openreach equipment and cabling to get to the exchange. At the exchange openreach hand over the traffic to various CPs (including BT retail) using their GEA product.

A lot of stupid shit happens in the US. It's a very different telecoms market and how they do things has no bearing on how we do them.

Re: @steelpillow and ImAlrightJack

I always thought it was that party conference when he appeared so happy and suddenly people realised how close he was to being elected.

I don't see why. People are stupid and careless. There's no reason to think that being employed in a nationalised industry would mean only the clever people would stay. In fact that there are many reasons to think that upon nationalisation the clever people would all leave. Thus nationalisation would increase the likelihood of such bone-headed moves.

That's the way it usually seems to go. Accountability seems to be something that the private sector does more enthusiastically than the public sector.

Re: Loony

Not sure about "British Broadband" though, why not just go back to calling it the GPO?

Probably for the same reason no-one wants to rename Sellafield to Windscale ;)

Re: Political self-obsession and onanism

For things like broadband, this is why they have the 20:1 and 50:1 contention ratios for business and personal use respectively.

Broadband provision ceased to have a specific ratio a while back, around when 'up to' came into being. It no longer made any sense. Now capacity provision is based on the level of complaints being received or (the more expensive ISPs) predicting usage growth patterns. Basically a particular route gets upgraded as/when it 'needs it' rather than on the basis of a numeric ratio.

Underpinning most of this is openreach and they seem to do a pretty good job of late of keeping up with CP's bandwidth requests. Getting rid of the cumbersome 'central's probably helped.

They terrrk err jerrrbs! Vodafone replaces 2,600 roles with '600 bots' in bid to shrink €48bn debt

You mean I've been talking to humans when I contact support? Wow.

Section 230 supporters turn on it, its critics rely on it. Up is down, black is white in the crazy world of US law

..although the ASA has limited legal force behind it. It's basically a club where everyone agrees to follow its rulings. It can refer the matter to other agencies which do have legal weight but most ASA rulings are just wrist slaps. In some ways it's surprising how well it works.

Back-2-school hacking: Kaspersky blames pesky script kiddies for rash of DDoS cyber hooliganism

Re: Back-2-School hacking

Zoinks!

Here are some deadhead jobs any chatbot could take over right now

Re: "Microsoft scammers"

Aww, bless 'er. My Dad's the same. He refers to Windows as 'The Program'. He still claims his email is hosted by Bigfoot (it was forwarded by them many years ago) and he prefers to refer to the internet as 'Google' (something the Mount View boys would probably be proud of).

I, for one, would like to thank Alistair for not including a photograph of him in a mini-skirt.

Boffins hand in their homework on Voyager 2's first readings from beyond Solar System

Re: Frequent Flier Points

Collection / delivery is still going to be an issue though obviously.

Nah. Hermes will claim they can deliver it next day. It's not all that much less believable than anything else they claim.

Re: I don't understand the diagram

I feel dizzy.

Re: Obligatory PTerry reference

What part was the dog and what part was the bear, or was it a centaur case where you basically stack a bear or dog on top of the other?

I think if you stack a bear on top of a dog what you get is a nasty mess.

Three UK does it again: Random folk on network website are still seeing others' account data

Re: Once is an unfortunate cockup. Twice needs stamping on

Four shalt thou not count.

Five is right out.

Boffins blow hot and cold over li-ion battery that can cut leccy car recharging to '10 mins'

Re: Power required

A hybrid generally does slow crawl stop/start urban driving on battery power. They are absolutely superb in these circumstances.

That experience on the A55 outside Abergele certainly showed that. I'd wondered what happened on really long delays when the battery had no chance of keeping the car going. From that experience it appears that Toyota have developed a very effective system. It looks like running the ICE at maximum efficiency to get energy into the battery then using the battery to propel the car is a very efficient way to propel the car at slow speed. Interesting that it chose to run the ICE at relatively low RPMs though. I'd have thought it'd go for 2,000 rather than 1,200.

It's a bloody boring and tedious way to drive past Abergele though :-/

Re: Power required

I'll completely accept that ICE engines are terribly inefficient at stop-start town driving, but even accounting for the fact that your Corolla is somewhat bigger than my Modus and uses petrol rather than Diesel, I'd say those figures are slightly disappointing and one of the reasons I've never totally understood the benefits of hybrid driving.

Agreed..sorta. I was hoping for better. However the truth is that my typical journey is not what the hybrid system is best suited for. Hybrids are best around town where figures of 70 even 80 mpg are possible. But even so I am getting better figures than my previous car (a Honda Jazz 1.3 CVT). It's looking like the hybrid system has reduced my fuel consumption by around 10%.

Would an equivalent diesel be better? I don't know. But I do think that a diesel would be noisier, smellier and possibly nowhere near as clean as the manufacturer claimed. Hybrids are not intended to be the next best thing. They are sold as more efficient than their petrol engine equivalents and especially so in an urban environment.

Something else to consider is that I was already an efficient driver. It might be that a more typical driver would have seen a bigger improvement. I've long wondered about that since a lot of what a hybrid is about is reclaiming lost energy and I try not to lose it in the first place (eg; I try to avoid ever using my brakes).

And one last thing - although I have the smaller 1.8 litre engine I do have the top spec which means bigger tyres. These have been found to be responsible for another 5 to 10% of fuel consumption with the previous Auris model. So like for like it's possible my fuel consumption has been reduced by 15% compared to my previous car with no loss of performance.

Before the Modus, in the last summer before I handed my Kangoo (very similar engine but very different gearing) over to my wife, that car did three tanks which each averaged something like 72mpg. Once it was relegated to the school run it still managed 55mpg+, and for that use a plug-in hybrid (with a battery capable of 20 - 30 miles) would probably be much more efficient.

And my Corolla would likely be 70 mpg or higher on a school run. This is why taxi drivers love the Prius. On the open-road it's above average for a petrol engine. Around town it's extremely good.

Re: Power required

You could be right there.

ICE efficiency is best at or near wide open throttle but that's a condition that you can't maintain for long in a road vehicle. The advantage of burning it in a power station is that it'd be easier to ensure that the power stations were operating at full throttle.

Efficient ICE: Driving 10 kilometres, burning 10 litres of fuel and extracting 40% of the energy.

Efficient vehicle: Driving 10 kilometres, burning 5 litres of fuel and extracting 30% of the energy.

One of things Toyota's hybrid system does is to charge the battery from the ICE. Although this means putting an extra load on the ICE it usually does it in such a way as to run the ICE more efficiently than it would if it were just moving the car. It will also sometimes use the electric motor to assist the ICE to avoid having to move the ICE into a less efficient part of the performance curve.

Re: Power required

An ICE is around 25% efficient, however this varies wildly with the gears, revs, speed etc. It's 0% when sat waiting with the engine on.

This is something that owning a hybrid has taught me - the inefficiency of ICE in urban areas. I own a Corolla and most of my driving is on single lane A roads at 50 mph. There's a bit of rush hour urban driving but it's probably only 10% of the total. Over the summer I was getting 60 mpg (measured at the pump).

Someone on a forum I visit is a taxi driver and has the same car. Over summer they've been averaging high 70s mpg. It's noticeable that allowing for a few model differences those forum members that spend most of their time bimbling around town get better results than those of us mostly on the open road. With ICE it'd be completely different.

Mind you it's also noticeable what effect weather has. I'm currently averaging 50 mpg so am suffering 20% higher fuel consumption and the battery is noticeably less keen and less capable.

Delayed, over-budget smart meters will be helpful – when Blighty enters 'Star Trek phase'

Re: WTF

And my old dumb electricity meter isn't expensive to "maintain". Literally nothing has to happen for years and years and years at a time, except maybe once a year a man comes to read the numbers, like he will still need to do for my dumb gas meter. That also went unchallenged on the radio. Grrr.

Not sure what you're trying to say here. I have a smart meter and it reports on both electricity and gas.

I also don't think most people will need to charge their cars all night. Not as long as they always plug them in when they get home. Most cars are only driven for an hour every day (often less) and it doesn't take ten hours to recharge the battery after an hour's driving.

The eagle has handed.... scientists a serious text message bill after flying through Iran, Pakistan

Re: My Favourite Birds

Parrots down at number 10? If he was still alive my dear ol' Budgie would be glaring at you now.

Oy!

We're late and we're unreliable but we won't invalidate your warranty: We're engineers!

Re: Steps for working with electricity in the home

One of my earlier DIY disasters went like this:

I was fitting a coat hanger to the entrance wall. I measured everything carefully, marked the holes. Double checked they were level then got my drill ready. Luckily there was a power socket in the hall conveniently close to where I wanted to put the hanger. So I drilled the first hole. It wasn't easy because this was a 1970s terrace and had concrete walls. None of yer modern plasterboard+cardboard rubbish. Then I moved onto the second hole. Started drilling and there was a bang and the drill stopped. Then I realised that the conveniently placed power socket was right below where the second hole needed to be drilled.

It took me two hours (!) to chip out enough concrete to expose enough of the wires to clean the mess up to allow me to replace the fuse in the consumer unit. Two weeks later it took my Dad a day (!!) to chip out enough of the wall to allow him to insert a junction box and repair the wiring. I sold that house 20 years ago and no doubt by now someone has unscrewed the front plate of that box and been puzzled as to why it was there..

I try to avoid DIY as well. But one day I got fed up of the drain pipe falling off the bottom of the sink. So I fixed it.

..and to be fair it hasn't fallen off since. I'm getting the whole kitchen replaced in a month or so but I won't be home to hear the laughing from the installers when they get around to dismantling that.

Traffic lights worldwide set to change after Swedish engineer saw red over getting a ticket

I can feel slightly less guilty about that now that I have a hybrid. It's still a waste of energy but at least my ICE won't restart just to move forward a couple of metres. I was actually quite impressed recently while stuck in an interminable queue on the A55 at Abergele. An hour to drive three miles to get clear but the fuel consumption shown on the dash moved between 66.4 (when the ICE was running at 1,200 rpm to charge the battery) and 66.9 just before the battery needed a recharge. It'd been 66.8 before I hit the queue so apparently (?) my car is more efficient crawling through stop/start traffic at 3 mph than it is cruising at 60 mph.

Unfortunately it was my fault. I vaguely knew about the roadworks before setting off and just forgot to take the A5/A470 route. I didn't make the same mistake going back :)

That's interesting. There could be a similar system in place at those lights. That would explain why it seems a bit random. I always roll forward anyway so perhaps when I've not seen it it's been because a vehicle in front didn't. Or maybe I've been the only vehicle wanting to turn right and it was clear so I've just gone through before it reacted to me entering the junction.

Many intersections now have different sets of traffic lights controlling different exit directions from the junction.

We get those in the UK quite a lot. There's one near me which has them but they appear to be part time. Either that or they are just defective. I'm usually negotiating that junction on Sunday afternoon turning right and usually there's a 'go right' indication and oncoming traffic stops. But sometimes the oncoming traffic stops and we don't get a 'go right' arrow.

Mind you that junction is a pain in the opposite direction. It's a long cycle for that road but you can see the lights from a long distance. It's a 30 zone so when you see the lights come into view and if they are red you don't know if you might as well lift off a bit and spend the wait moving slowly toward the lights or if you should keep going at 30 in order to get there in time to make it through the next green cycle.

NB: In that Street View the 'go right' light is only on the distant repeater and hasn't lit because oncoming traffic are still being signalled to go (either that or the red people carrier is being naughty).

Good news – America's nuke arsenal to swap eight-inch floppy disks for solid-state drives

Re: NSA, GCHQ, etc?

I'm not sure we should talk about this because it might involve a Private Matter.

Re: NSA, GCHQ, etc?

I don't know but he might be in for some Corporal Punishment.

So, what's fashion going to look like on the Moon in 2024? NASA's ready to show you the goods

Re: Orange is ...

Why the Horror Channel

Brian Blessed?

Only kidding.

More likely it's the violations of the laws of physics that are pretty horrific. But to be fair the Eagles take off from their pads in complete silence if I remember correctly. A pity then that anyone observing from a nearby room probably would hear something at least at first.

I loved that show as a child but it left me conflicted. I mean the whole premise is pretty ridiculous and then to have the moon drifting from star to star and worse, allowing time to launch Eagles in order to investigate passing planets was outrageous. And then in the last (I think) series they had that alien woman who was a shape shifter and at one point she becomes a bee in order to fly through the air vents. It's difficult enough explaining how a natural bee gets enough lift so a bee with the mass of a well developed adult humanoid is a serious stretch :)

Microsoft Teams: The good, the bad, and the ugly

The UI needs more work. For some reason my recent contacts persists in showing me people I haven't chatted to very much. It's also not immediately obvious how to find a contact, despite how frequently I have to do it. And why can't I just right-click a contact (or a selection of contacts) and then 'Start conversation' or 'Invite into conversation'? Adding someone to an existing video call is more convoluted than it ought to be.

But when you work out how to get it to do what you want to do then it's fine and it seems quite capable of handling three remote contacts in the same video call which is good.

I just wish it was a little more intuitive.

No ghosts but the Holy one as vicar exorcises spooky tour from UK's most haunted village

the Roman Saturnalia festival (a week of orgies!) is pretty much responsible for Christmas

Well I've clearly not been experiencing the right kind of Christmas for a long time :(

Re: In a complete about face...

Do the shoes save our soles?

'We go back to the Moon to stay': Apollo vets not too chuffed with NASA's new rush to the regolith

Re: ..to stay

There's a graveyard in my town marked on the maps as 'disused'. I'm not entirely sure how you can have a 'disused graveyard'.

Tough luck, Jupiter, you've lost your crown for now: Boffins show Saturn has more moons

Re: If pluto's not a planet...

If it turns out that your memory is wrong would you find that galling?

Sorry.