Posts by cyberdemon

Former Post Office boss returns CBE to sender over computer system scandal

Re: So what was actually wrong?

So as I understand it, the system was so badly designed abd implemented that records would overwrite eachother e.g. multiple terminals in the same branch writing to the same field without any locking, or updates from the central computer being delayed, and then overwriting local transactions that had been made in the meantime, etc.. And the only way that Fujitsu could cover it up was by employing an ops team to manually update the records using remote access, and to deliberately hide this activity from SPMs.

Why these errors always resulted in a shortfall for SPMs and a profit for the PO is a mystery. It could be because SPMs did not report it when they were in surplus (very unlikely, but probably the explanation the psychopathic PO would go with), it could be because post offices generally handed out more cash through pension collections etc than they brought in by selling stamps, or it could be that someone at the post office management was criminally malevolent, and made a policy of always making adjustments in the PO's favour. Would explain how they were able to bring such a dinosaur of an institution into profit.

Re: How many fraud and theft cases in the 80s?

It's just as unlikely that all 700 were dishonest as it is that none of them were.

That's why we have a court and er, independent judicial system.

The fact that the Post Office could run its own prosecutions and hold kangaroo courts where the judge is in their pocket, the only evidence submitted is their own and they never ever lose, is something that very few knew about until now.

They have probably been abusing this power for centuries. But the real scandal here is that privatisation somehow allowed them to keep that power, and continue to abuse it on an industrial scale for profit!

Need to make some 3D models but lack the skill and talent? Say, have you tried... AI?

Re: Explains something

Explains why Trimble (a multinational arms company) paid so much to buy SketchUp from Google, before pushing everyone towards cloud-based modeling where they can slurp the whole design pricess.

And also explains why Autodesk have done the sane thing, forcing people onto cloud based modelling

(No self respecting AI would come up with something as daft as the cybertruck. I think Elon just forgot to set the facet number $fn in OpenSCAD)

Cutting-edge microscopy reveals bottled water has 'up to 100 times' more bits of plastic than previously feared

Re: Reverse Osmosis...!

And the other was Dasani

Qualcomm CEO's pay jumps 395% in slow year for phone chips

The real enemy is Corporate Culture, that lets CxOs of all big businesses pay themselves obscene figures that make the rest of us look like peasants/slaves, even when they have done a shit job.

It's not all watching transparent TV from a voice-commanded bidet. CES has work stuff too

"Oi, have you heard of a brush, mate?"

SpatialLabs 3D display

Real-time eyeball tracking embedded into my laptop? No thanks. But I bet Google have already got an ad-slinging API for it

HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten

Made to be Hated

Quick, run an ad campaign pretending that we are a lovely honest company that everyone loves

That worked for Amazon, didn't it?

Not unique to HP. But HP were always the worst for it in my experience, and IIRC they did it first.

That and forced crapware with driver installs, and trying to make people install their HP Cloud Print app

COVID-19 infection surge detected in wastewater, signals potential new wave

Re: I'm not a doctor

Has anyone told Thames Water?

Need to plug in an EV? BT Group kicks off cabinet update pilot

Re: Another of Baldrick's "Cunning Plans"

slightly more detailed story here

The charging solution works by retrofitting the cabinets with a device that enables renewable energy to be shared to a charge point alongside the existing broadband service with no need to create a new power connection. EV charging can be deployed to cabinets that are in-use for current copper broadband services, or in those due for retirement, depending on the space and power available to the unit. Once the cabinet is no longer needed for broadband, as nationwide full fibre rollout progresses, the broadband equipment is recycled, and additional EV charge points can be added

"Up to six" EV charging points can be wired to each cabinet "with a device that enables renewable energy to be shared... [blah blah marketing/PR drivel]" translation: The "smart device" will ensure that they all draw no more than the power supply rating of the old green cabinet, which may be less than a single 7.4kW slow charge. So you might have 6 cars charging at 500W each with this.

Re: Another of Baldrick's "Cunning Plans"

That looks like an EV chargepoint placed next to an old BT cabinet. Not a BT cabinet with a charge socket sticking out of it as I had imagined.

It's a PR stunt. Move along.

Fujitsu wins flood contract extension despite starring in TV drama about its failures

Re: Horizon

Good lord.

When the most qualified guy in the team, (presumably, since he is complaining about the lack of qualifications and competence in the rest of the team), has a BSc from Sheffield Poly, you know it's bad.

Re: Horizon

What bugs ME about it was why were the errors always in the post office's favour? If it was random errors caused by fields not updating etc, then there would have been discrepancies both ways. But this seemed to be a systematic error that always resulted in losses for SPMs and profits for the Post Office.

Given that the PO knew full well that the subpostmasters were under contract to make up any shortfall in the records that -they- could alter with no traceability, and that they had the right to bring their own criminal prosecution against people without involving the police or the CPS, then there would seem to be a means, motive and opportunity for deliberately stealing from their subpostmasters and framing them for the crime.

Never mind whatsername's OBE, i'd be more interested in an investigation of David Smith, Horizon programme manager and then managing director, who celebrated when Seema Misra was jailed on her son's birthday while 8 weeks pregnant

Road to Removal: A blueprint for yanking billions of tons of CO2 out of our atmosphere

Re: Carbon capture is a scam

Then you won't like to read this.

Seriously? A DAC plant??

What a waste of good baseload geothermal power.

All the energy used by that plant will have to be made up for mainly by fossil fuels, more than nullifying any CO2 extraction done by the plant.

And what happens to the CO2 after it is captured? It is used by oil companies for Fracking.

Does it stay in the ground? I don't believe that they care if it does.

Re: There’s none as predictable…

I'm better described as a skeptic, not a denier.

Calling people "deniers" is something that cultists and propagandists do.

Re: wish you were right ...

What's that stuff that the Germans are burning in their power plants then?

Re: There’s none as predictable…

Who are you calling right-wing?

I actually like to read the Guardian in the morning. Has some good stuff about the Post Office etc in it this morning, but it doesn't mean I have to believe everything that they print.

I read the Private Eye too. Guess what their opinion of Carbon Capture & Storage is? It's nothing but a gravy train for owners of empty oil-wells.

Heretic!

Rik, you're just trolling us now

Yes, forests are great CO2 sinks.. So we should start by removing subsidies from Drax.. Replace it with a nuke plant. Or failing that even going back to burning coal would be better than what it is doing now.

CCS is a road to nowhere, but it has lots of dosh on offer for snake-oil sakesmen.

Tesla's latest Autopilot safety patch hits 1.6M Chinese vehicles

Re: Think twice

TBH the first car in the video looks more like the owner recently had a disagreement with the local or national mafia, rather than a battery fault. That's not like any "battery explosion" I've ever seen.

The second car we didn't really see the crash, it says more about the mechanical build quality and/or the speed it was travelling at than the battery.

The rest of the video is interesting though. I wish youtube videos didn't use such clickbaity intros and thumbnails, it detracts credibility from the rest of the video.

Re: Think twice

interesting video..

There is a whiff of propaganda or at least alarmism about it (par for the course on youtube i guess) especially at the start with the violently-exploding cars, the trip to the cemetery etc. But the general market trends reported and the dumping tactics are undeniable. They referenced this report about Solar PV, which lays out something I've worried about for years i.e. that the current production levels of PV panels are simply unsustainable, and that if/when China pulls the plug, the whole supply chain collapses.

In the UK, we have bet the farm on being able to buy batteries from China. We have closed our engine plants, and we have failed to make good on our plans to ramp up domestic battery production (because it wasn't very feasible in the first place)

"May you live in Interesting Times" ..

NIST: If someone's trying to sell you some secure AI, it's snake oil

Re: Correction

Are you saying that the entire profession of "Marketing" is equal to the dubious profession of Grift?

Pretty much true, except for the very few genuine cases where a customer who doesn't actually know what they want or need, meets an advertiser who is actually honest. Those events are pretty rare.

Ransomware payment ban: Wrong idea at the wrong time

Re: Wrong

+1

JLH, Why do you think there should be an exception for critical infrastructure? What happened to "don't negotiate with terrorists" etc?

If someone is holding critical infrastructure to ransom, and you pay them, what's to stop them from demanding more money, or taking the money and borking the infrastructure anyway? If they even had the means to do so in the first place? Or they could just leak the access to someone else, or plant a logic time bomb, etc etc.

It's completely daft to pay a ransom. One could argue that the ONLY exception should be where it is paid in such a way where it can a) be used to identify the perps and bring them to justice AND b) can be got back afterwards. E.g. someone has kidnapped your daughter. The correct response is to get the police involved early, and with their permission leave the money in a place where the person coming to collect it can be followed by the police, etc etc. Otherwise they can simply say "Thanks for the dosh, now double it."

However, when the perps are in another country, how can you be sure of bringing them to justice after paying a ransom? You can't. So there is no reason to pay it.

In any case, this sort of exception if it is ever valid, needs to be made by the police, not by the board of directors.

Teardown finds Huawei's 5nm notebook processor was made in Taiwan, not China

Re: Much needed relief

So far as I am aware, the main thing that burns energy on a chip is gate capacitance.

If you have a CMOS (complimentary-MOSFETs) pair of transistors, then to change its state, you have to change the voltage on two capacitors, one referenced to VSS and the other to VDD.

If the gate capacitance is 1fF (femtofarad, 1e-15 Farad) and VDD is 1V, then every clock cycle you are expending 1fC * 1V = 1fJ of energy (1/2 C V^2, but we can drop the 1/2 because we have two gate capacitances). If you are clocking at 1GHz this is 1 nanowatt, per transistor i.e. a billion transistors all clocking at 1GHz per watt. If you used big transistors with a pF gate capacitance then it would be 1uW per transistor-pair, again assuming they are all clocking every cycle.

A smaller gate area would reduce capacitance, but a thinner oxide layer would increase it. So maybe there is a sweet spot in transistor dimensions for low capacitance. I'm at the limit of my knowledge here though!

New cars bought in the UK must be zero emission by 2035 – it's the law

> the police force will be there to take care of any discontents...

No they won't. They are all in EVs

Re: Think

Aah, Enapter. Yeah I have heard of them.

One tiny problem with their 1MW electrolysers.. They don't exist. Despite plenty of orders and deadlines missed.. There are none on service.

An investment opportunity for you..

Re: Think

Aah, so you are the same pigheaded German AC from the nukes vs mr. Burns thread.

Of course, you desperately want a renewable hydrogen solution after you closed all your nukes on a knee-jerk and are now burning megatonnes of lignite along with US and Qatari LNG after Gazprom turned off the taps.

Unfortunately you have been sold a lie. Of course, multi billion euro companies will tell you it can work when they know it won't, for as long as you are willing to hand them subsidies it's great for them, and when it doesn't work, coal oil and gas are your only options, they have you (quite literally) over a barrel.

Shell used to have one H2 pump at its Cobham service station on the M25, just east of the M3 junction. But i never saw anyone use it, it looked horrendously expensive, and afaik it is no longer in service. How much "green hydrogen" does Germany actually use in vehicles from those 100 filling stations, I wonder? I would guess that more H2 leaks out of them than is actually used in a vehicle. But it doesn't matter when the objective is simply a bit of greenwashing.

Re: Think

All of those are still in the lab. Show me something at industrial scale, before I will believe you that it is possible at Utility scale.

The best and most recent of those new electrocatalysts "lasts for over two months." Lol.

Re: Think of the Grid!

No, that's when the wind was blowing a minute ago, but now isn't, or when it wasn't, but is now blowing a gale.

Stop confusing GW with GWh. "GW/hour" is nonsense and describes a rate of change in power

Re: Think

Mr AC, since you know so much about economics, supply chains and electrochemical engineering, can you tell us how much Platinum is required to build a 500MW green-hydrogen electrolyser? And how much that might cost in our reactive, finite-supply market?

Hint: each pair of electrodes allows you to convert 1 Volt, give or take. So to convert a 1000V supply, you need 1000 electrolytic cells in series. Then divide 500MW by your stack voltage to get the current needed.. (In this case, 500,000 Amps) That gives you a rough idea of the surface-area required of each electrode in the stack

@justthefacts

> For example, if you set an 11pm-6am night tariff, then those people who have upgraded their domestic supply to 350kW because they have a Tesla fastcharge…..their charger turns on at 11pm sharp, sinks 350kW for 20minutes until 11.20, and then shuts off again.

See icon. My keyboard is completely ruined.

Nobody will have a 350kW fast charger at home, you plonker. They will be lucky to charge at 7kW at home. (That's still 30A off their 230V supply, so their car may have to pause charging while they take a shower..)

It would be stupid and expensive to fast charge at home, even if you had your own 11kV substation in your garage. It wrecks the battery and borks the grid, the only reason to fast charge is if you have conked out at a motorway service station and need to be on the road again urgently.

But even with 2kW-7kW trickle charging, the overnight load is going to be a problem if everyone is forced to drive EVs, because diversity goes out of the window as everyone uses 2-7kW at once. More if everyone has heat pumps struggling overnight to collect enough heat from the air for their morning shower

Re: UK govt, as usual, is totally irrelevant

And Sunak is just Nigel Farage in a blue tie

And Nigel Farage is Oswald Moseley in a pink-and-yellow-spotted bow tie!

Everything has shifted one notch to the right. Thanks, Facebook

Re: Think of the Grid!

And what happens when the idiot in a porsche enters your highway-engineered area at 70mph off the A###?

He plants his car in a house

Nice post.

Up there in the noise, I mentioned a need for a voltage standard somewhere higher than 400V but less than 11kV. Maybe 1kV. Suitable for connecting directly to the power electronics of an EV charger without a transformer. A small domestic transformer for the home to supply other appliances

Is this being talked about or is it a pipe dream?

Also, as someone employed in the sector, what are your views on phasing out gas, biomass good or evil, and long-term storage of renewables? I heard the UK is officially 'giving up' on hydrogen, so what next?

Re: Think of the Grid!

Robot cars will only work reliably once we ban humans from the roads

Re: Think of the Grid!

Yes this was one of my points that I was being downvoted to oblivion for.. Maybe people think i'm pro-speeding, i'm not.

They needed to enforce the 30 limits. But by lowering the limit to 20, they are reducing the possibility that it can ever be enforced.

They need more speed cameras, but they can't put them in because the punishment (3 points on your licence, banned from driving at 12) is excessive for those caught doing 25 in a 20

If they could adjust it so the points were proportional to the overspeed, and a fine say 1% of the value of the car to get the knobheads in the porsches, i'd be all for that.

They could easily put automatic enforcement of speed limits into the cars based on the sat-nav road database, but that will be highly unpopular and a vote loser, so they will get labour to do it.

Re: Think of the Grid!

> But anyway, since there aren't enough raw materials in the world to manufacture the needed batteries, this is only a rhetoric subject : it will not happen, physical laws have precedence over human laws.

Right, but of course by the time everyone realises this, all the ICE car and engine companies will have gone bust.

Only the rich will be able to drive their own cars

Re: Think of the Grid!

That one is new on me!

The council here are accusing the public of vandalising the signs.. You are saying they did it themselves?

In a statement, a spokesperson for Southampton City Council said: “We are appalled by the senseless vandalism to the 20mph signs, which will of course result in a cost for their replacement.

Re: Think of the Grid!

Well, global warming or no global warming they are also running out, in terms of what we can get out of the ground.

And oil in particular has a lot of important uses besides burning it ...

Re: The Market

> problems with the grid, not enough electricity generation or storage capacity, who cares!

The tories care! Because this sort of problem requires specialist business consultants, quangoes and the like, to think up bullshit that never actually solves the problem but makes a chuffing fortune out of it! Exactly what you need an ex-minister to run, nudge nudge wink wink, your old chum will be out of his parliamentary seat soon

Re: Hmmm..

Lol wot?

You've obviously never driven for a living. Time is Money, mate!

Re: Hmmm..

Yes because BYD and Xiaomi EVs are so simple to repair

Re: Think of the Grid!

Seems to be 20mph everywhere now, not just wales. Not that anyone seems to have slowed down. Around here people have spraypainted over all the 20mph signs, and people seem to be speeding faster than ever.

I suspect the real reason for the 20mph zones is energy efficiency for EVs. EVs are at their most efficient at 20mph, whereas ICEs are well outside their optimum efficiency band

Re: "It's all about me"

> So privatise the roads. £10/mi to drive an ICE, £1/mile to drive an electric = problem solved

Also there's no way a privatised road network would be charging more for ICEs than EVs, given how many more potholes the heavier and faster-accelerating EVs seem to make, as well as the expense of providing charging stations along the privatised road!

Re: Long-term profit opportunity???

Yes, exactly because of daft laws like this one!

Re: Think of the Grid!

Well, the sort of fan oven that I cook my turkey in has various elements. The one around the fan is 1400W, and the grill has 1x 1400W + 1x 800W. But in normal "fan oven" mode, it uses only the one around the fan, and to stay at 170C, it's less than 50% duty cycle at steady-state.

I expect that your 5kW "American Oven" only uses that much if cooking in several compartments at once, and even then, not for a high duty cycle

Everyone wants better web search – is Perplexity's AI the answer?

Re: All I really want

So you mean you want a true boolean query of all web pages matching your criteria??

Too powerful. You can't have that. You must be a terrorist.

Use the AI-"search" like the rest of the proles

Windows keyboards to get a Copilot key – but how quickly will users jump?

All modern TV controllers

Seem to come with a sodding Netflix button these days

It's just bribery, isn't it?

Hey logitech/ducky/dell/lenovo, redesign your keyboards for our new advertising campaign new killer feature that everyone will want to buy your keyboards for!

We'll erm, make it worth your while.