Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Give us your biometric data to get your lunch in 5 seconds, UK schools tell children

Re: The only relevant question....

Between lead in petrol, Findus crispy pancakes and Sunny Delight - I'm assuming those of us born in the 70s are basically immune to chemistry.

Re: Not much of a surprise

>Just how racist is the Scottish Assmbly, might I enquire?

Honest question from an ex-pat with no skin in the game - I was confused why our Aberdeen office had a strict rule against sportswear until it was explained to me.

Presumably the independants aren't big fans of the Conservative and Unionist party. On the other hand the wee-frees aren't full of Christian love and understanding for the left-footers.

So when the SNP gets to rule over an independent Scotland - who goes to the Gulags/takes advantage of Eu freedom of movement ?

> Doppler Radar

A robust stance from the Wind Shear supporters there

Re: Free school meals

Even cheaper if you add in the cost of administering free school meals, the armies of social workers etc to do assessments on who needs them etc

Presumably anybody who doesn't need free school meals is already opted out because little Trixie-Blossom can only eat vegan gluten-free organic moonbeams

Re: The only relevant question....

Gone down from the height of 70s cuisine that was the Spam Fritter ?

Re: 5th largest economy in the world

Fingerprint scanners are a reasonable idea

They store a hash of a single print, ie. they aren't useful for implementing a final solution to the problem of the gingers among us.

They can't be lost (except that kid that got a 'D' in woodwork)

The payment can't be donated to Gripper Stebson (showing my age!)

But that comes out of a totally different budget - it's even on a different spreadsheet

Then you would have to pay the outsourced/subcontracted dinner ladies (or whatever the PPP term is for them) for 2 hours.

EasyJet flight loadsheet snafu caused by software 'code errors' says UK safety agency

Re: Weight of passengers

The Italian Job maneuver ?

Re: Weight of passengers

That means it takes extreme skill/practice/aptitude - it doesn't mean they can count past 10 without taking their shoes and socks off.

Re: Weight of passengers

Army helicopter pilots can do adding up ?

Especially in stones and lbs = that's officer stuff

Re: Weight of passengers

The checkin desk had a scale that you stood on with your hand baggage - so you could always claim it was a very heavy laptop

Re: Weight of passengers

> carriers should use actual weights rather than averages

I think that was specifically for these very small aeroplanes. I've been weighed on flights in the far North where you are wearing half of an REI store. It's done very discreetly so you don't see the actual number.

I don't imagine actual weight difference of 300 passengers on a 575 ton A380 makes that much difference.

Although I do think it is unfair that you get charged $1M/kg for overweight bags full of kit when Jabba the Hut's big brother is allowed to overflow into 3 seats for free.

Re: Not a trolling comment

I imagine a formal requirement.

Req: 3.141592654.... A load sheet shall be generated before boarding the aircraft

Therefore there is no mechanism for generating a new load sheet after boarding has started because that would be illegal. The formal requirements would be that in this event the flight is cancelled, a new load sheet is calculated, along with a new flight plan and a ripple effect that makes 1000s of flights delayed.

Re: Weight of passengers

I was on a flight on some largish Boeing when they asked a dozen of us to move to the front of the cabin for takeoff.

Given that we were flying out of Houston and the other passengers all appeared to be either Sumo wrestlers or going to competitive eating event - I suspect the pilot took one look and thought; fsck what the balance software says

To be far how many Americans would know that there is an ocean between LA and Hawaii ?

One of the usual idiot congresspersons was claiming that Hawaii's spike in Covid wasn't due to tourists but was all the fault of illegal immigrants - presumably building a wall would help.

Have they thought of painting it on the side of the plane, rather than just have a discrete little "320i" badge on the boot?

Weight of passengers

Is this the system that uses an estimate of passenger's weight based on a very large, and therefore accurate, survey of bomber crews in 1945?

Dishing up the goods: Square Kilometre Array moves out of the theoretical and into the contractual

Re: 10 years of deign work ?

Mostly no - when it was started nobody had any idea how to do the electronics.

Building it hoping extrapolating that GPU/FPGA/storage would catch up was a reasonable plan.

Unlike a certain optical survey telescope that worried about the data size and spent most of the design time inventing their own tape drive technology, because nothing available could store the XXXX bytes of data expected.

Where XXXX is a number that sounded insane at the time but is now probably on your phone

Alternatively

That's 0.05mWales or 16,300 square cricket pitches in New Imperial Units

Amid drama at .NET Foundation, Microsoft's De Icaza reveals it was meant to be like GNOME Foundation

Go on then

Explain the el'reg joke about why the pic is a horse in sheep's clothing ?

(hoping it's more than Miquel is Mexican and that's a vaguely S.American animal)

Oops, they did it again – rogue Soyuz spurt gave ISS an attitude problem

>cosmonauts had guns for dealing with locals who might be hostile.

Presumably why American Apollo missions landed in the safety of the ocean

> landing a few thousand miles from the ground crew.

Ground crew? This is Russia

You get to hitchhike to the nearest town and then get a bus.

The early Soyuz capsules had messages on the outside in the languages of the various -stans, saying "These are Soviet heroes, please help them".

Boeing 737 Max chief technical pilot charged with deceiving US aviation regulators over MCAS

Re: Automation and Safety

Tricky balance.

There is reasonable evidence that the AF447 crash was caused by pilots who fundamentally didn't know how to fly, they were aircraft systems managers.

But there have been many more accidents by pilots who ignored warnings/faults/ATC and their crew because they had the biggest mustache

Re: REasoning past B....

>I'd just like to point out that bringing your own bomb in NO way lessens the chances?

Baldrick- why are you carving your name on that bullet ?

......

Yes because it was his job to tell the FAA.

He is not a test pilot in the "Right Stuff" sense - it's just a macho title for the job of signing off on the training requirements.

The engineers made the changes on the assumption that the effects of these would be made known to the pilots in a way that they could use them safely. Boeing decided there were business reasons for not doing that.

>If someone at the FAA had made the effort to check the design of the flight control system,

That's not really how regulated industries work.

If the FAA had to check every line of code in Boeing's systems they would need more programmers than Boeing with more experience of the Boeing software design than Boeing itself. At this point why not just have the FAA design all aircraft ?

If the FAA don't trust Boeing's design, can they trust Boeing's manufacturing? Do they have to have an FAA inspector standing next to each Boeing machinist watching what they are doing? Does this extend down the supply chain to all subcontractors? Does the FAA have to have a guy in the mine watching somebody dig out the bauxite?

The point of ISO9001 and ISO13485 and ISO all-the-bloody-rest, is that you say what you are going to do and you do it in the way you said. At some point the regulators have to trust you.

It's the same reason you have traffic laws rather than a cop sitting next to every driver.

That;s still Boeing's fault though.

Allowing untermenschen to buy these aeroplanes - when they are specifically designed to only be flown by 'real' men

Re: Some extra info

No this is worse.

You could argue that the Pinto's fuel tank needed more protection - but you can always add more protection, more airbags, more safety features etc etc.

This is like having a hot exhaust pipe going through the middle of the fuel tank and then solving this by having an accelerator pedal that stops working if it gets too hot. And a single temperature sensor and not telling the driver.

Re: Some extra info

With aviation I think it got even worse.

The NTSB were created because the FAA's remit was to promote air travel AND enforce safety - so every safety issue had to be resolved in a way that didn't harm the perception of air safety, ie. it was always the dead pilot's fault

Then there was a claim that post 9/11 the was an attitude that any criticism of Boeing was unpatriotic because B52s were vital in the war on terror.

Re: Hmmm....

>may not be the safest or cheapest way

Why would that be a concern?

The point of manned space flight is to transfer non-defense spending to defense companies in the districts of politicians on the funding committee.

Re: Some extra info

Sorry: Phone+Brain autocomplete = I work in medical devices

... doh ....

Some extra info

Before everyone leaps in about "blaming some poor engineer" - he sent emails/texts bragging about how he had tricked the FDA by fixing simulator tests.

Career advice for prospective BOFH: whether you're rigging LIBOR or denying the existence of MCAS - don't leave an email trail.

Computer scientists at University of Edinburgh contemplate courses without 'Alice' and 'Bob'

Re: Use the local language...

Aoibheann

Coillte or Clodagh

Eoghan

Líadain

Síbeail or Seanán

Raghnall

Tadhg

Orfhlaith

Re: my wife

Doesn't my wife imply ownership the other way around?

Like My God, My country, My Lord or My Cat ?

Bank manager tricked into handing $35m to scammers using fake 'deep voice' tech

Re: Naming

Maybe in the UAE.

Here they would definitely require an email from a .ru address requesting the bank manager to buy $35M in gift cards and mail then to a PO box

Space boffins: Exoplanet survived hydrogen-death of its host star

Re: Evolved homo-superior

Cat

Wife

Dog

Husband (possibly tied with Macbook)

"Survived"

I bet it made a bit of a mess though.

Definitely affected property values

US Army slows ~$20bn project to put Microsoft's HoloLens VR headsets into the field

Re: The hunt for robo-grunt

Because the US army is mostly a way of doing socialism in poor red states

Want a job, want free food and lodging, want a free education, want free healthcare ?

Then join the army to fight socialism!

All I want for Christmas is a delivery address that a delivery courier can find

Re: Sounds like the perfect solution to Christmas gift-giving

Or we turn the whole thing into a Secret Santa. Everyone gets a container number at random and have to go to the port, find the container and take the contents home.

Re: 3 words

The problem is that postal address to GPS (ie WGS84) coordinates is unreliable or expensive and done by the brilliant IT dept of a national post service.

What3words would presumably ask you to find your own address and at least check it's vaguely correct on the map. Rather than entering 100West 100Ave, precise name of local municipality rather than name of city.

Scoot on over for a wheely tricky mystery with an electrifying solution

Re: Yes, static is a thing

Moved on from funny handshakes then

Acer expands its antimicrobial PC offerings – with caveat they may not offer any protection

Re: Use copper

So just glue some gears on it ?

Or will any old, copper plated hunk of 1980s junk work?

Re: Only the strong survive

>Wouldn't it be easier to avoid holding drinks or food that generates crumbs over your keyboard

So some sort of intravenous tube system ?

Think management might be considering it

Mind your Ps and queues: Bork makes a visit to the A&E

Re: OK, I'll bite

>Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust

We used to call em hospitals.

EU Commission may extend antitrust probe into Nvidia's $54bn merger with Arm

Re: British!

Wait till they find out that Rolls Royce and Bentley are German - splutters into Daily Telegraph

Microsoft .NET updates include C and C++ code in Blazor WebAssembly, release date for Visual Studio 2022

C++ desktop?

For those of us who have to get real work done, have Microsoft decided what C++ users are supposed to use for desktop apps this time?

Or do we just stick to nice cross-platform Qt ?

Macintosh Classic II and triceratops skull on auction: One's a dinosaur, the other has three horns on its face

Re: What would the skull go for

The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur skeletons was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet.

Bad news, AMD fans: This week's Windows 11 update didn't fix your performance woes (they may be worse)

Re: are we getting the picture yet?

>We have the third choice.

VMS ?

Although I'm hearing so many stories about people being anti-VAX

Re: Looks like that was a BIG brown envelope

Some sort of deal between Intel and Microsoft to screw over AMD? inconceivable !