Posts by John Brown (no body)

Boeing's Calamity Capsule returns to Earth without a crew

Re: Helium?

Yes, it's all down to the voice punch line at the very end :-)

Re: Which bright spark named it "Calamity"

"Lucky sod! I'd like to be kept stranded on an island by a nymph ..."

o! :-)

FTC urged to stop tech makers downgrading devices after you've bought them

Re: Car thing

"Perhaps you missed the last 7 recessions?"

I lived though and well remember the last 6 recessions. The 7th was in 1961, a year before I was born, so I hope you'll excuse and allow me that one. clearly you are a bit older than me if you remember the 1961 recession :-)

So yeah, I grew up in the shadow of the UK still recovering from WWII and a general philosophy of buy what you need and save up for luxuries, avoiding buying on the never-never as much as possible. I'm still living in the house I bought when I was 21 and lived through 10 years when mortgage rates were in double digits and could only afford an old car I had to keep fixing myself or do without. I do have a level of sympathy with those who were born during and have only ever known low interest rates. I have a lot less sympathy for those who have experienced higher rates and the past and still have loans and debts up to hilt.

Re: Car thing Quality not quantity of it just working on day 1.

WTF? That seemed like it was written in English, but the words appeared to be in some sort of strange and incomprehensible order, not to mention included both made up and defunct words. I know English is a fluid and evolving language, but I think you just jumped a few too many steps in the evolutionary process for the rest of us to be able understand your point. I I'm assuming you did actually have a point.

Re: Synology

That doesn't even make sense. If the existing box can handle that, why remove it? I could see them releasing a new unit with cheaper hardware where that could be a way of making it seem as decent as the older device, but removing it from a device that is currently capable doesn't make any sense at all to me.

Re: Micro$oft

w11 requirements stopping many devices from being used...cannot or are not even aware of *nix)and will have to replace perfectly good kit

Hey, don't knock it! I got myself a very nice scanner for free because there was no Win7 driver for it and it "just worked" with Sane on 'nix (and still does!) :-)

I'm expecting a drop in the value of "old" laptops when MS decides it's had enough of supporting Win10 :-)

"so long as it's possible to buy a suitable player,"

You mean you haven't made "backups" on a computer, just in case of accident or damage? (and convenience!!)

Re: Car thing

Are you a Sicilian grandmother, or at least descended from one? :-)

Re: Car thing

"if Rover going bust had bricked all Rover cars?"

It does make one wonder where we headed with all these "connected" cars, especially EVs if the mothership goes under or decides to no longer support the model which is constantly "calling home". Will it still work? Will it still mostly work? Will it go into "limp mode" after 6 months of losing contact? What about older "connected" cars using 3G as 3G is switched off? Is the (e)SIM accessible or replaceable?

Re: Car thing

"Part pairing means a phone repairer cannot use the screen of s stolen iPhone to repair another one, reducing the value of the stolen phone."

There was a BBC News story just today showing what happens to stolen phones. They end up in Shenzhen or similar where they are stripped for useable parts, which may or may not include having the gear to make paired parts appear to be genuine again. For all we know, the parts end up back on the Apple production line as a "side hustle"

Re: Car thing

"When did consumers become so apathetic to companies screwing us that we just accept and go on?"

When the young, rebelling against their parents "old fashioned ways" began to accept "renting everything, owning nothing", instead of listening to their parents sage advice and experience of saving up until you can afford something and not demanding it "now" for a small upfront cost and a very long tail of paying forever (until the real owner decides you can't have it any more)

Re: If it requires an app to function or control

and the origin of the term "bassinet" in the first place tells you it was a repurposed kitchen object used by the poor as a babies bed :-)

Re: Reminds me of TV sets

They are working on that. There are some that place a banner on the screen over the displayed image informing you that it can't get a network connection. AFAIK, they do allow you (for now!) to press an "OK" button to acknowledge the "problem" and it will go away until the next time you use it.

Re: Reminds me of TV sets

"If I can do stuff that became common in the 80/90s like adjusting the color from the defaults that's nice to have, but even that is probably something I can live without."

Speaking of which, have you noticed how hard it is to change brightness/contrast on "modern TV? Buried in menus, and no buttons on the remote control to directly adjust them. A pain in the arse with some shows unless you watching in a blacked out room.

Trump taps Musk to lead 'government efficiency' task force

"Elon, because he is not very busy, has agreed..."

Weirdly, that was the main take out from the article for me too :-)

It felt like a back-handed compliment.

Re: Musk's plan

That may be the way an embassy is generally treated by convention, but in most countries it's not the actual legal position. So, "technically", no it it's not US soil. and most definitely not US "sovereign territory". The Vienna Convention describes it in full and being born inside an embassy does not make you automatically a citizen of that country.

A school friend, on a school exchange visit to Germany with me, had a passport showing he was born in Malaysia (in the UK embassy) and he told me his parents, both British and working at said embassy, had to apply for British citizenship for him as he was, by default and place of birth, Malaysian. That application was pretty much a formality, but still had to be done because of the way the UK and Malaysian law and how the Vienna convention works

Cisco merch shoppers stung in Magecart attack

Re: Plausible Deniability

"Plausible deniability."

Yeahbut, no one cares. They see the brand name Cisco and stop reading/thinking after that. No one cares if Cisco outsourced their tat store. It's Cisco, and that's all anyone wants to know. If they can't choose a reliable 3rd party outsourcer and contract or monitor them, then it's Ciscos reputation[*} that gets trashed. After all, part of Ciscos business is online security and protection. Shirley the have deals with 3rd party contractors to use Cisco kit to help protect Ciscos reputation?

* for whatever type of reputation you may think they have :-)

ESA prints 3D metal shape in space for first time

Re: Saying this with respect..

Probably, in most industries. It's just either not making the news at the moment or it's areas you or I have little direct interest in so don't notice it. Fusion (still 50 years away, natch!), fission (thorium in particular), batteries and/or other storage tech, more efficient solar panels, more efficient electric motors (Evs), generators (wind turbines), one I just saw the other day was pumped storage using a "slurry" meaning far lower head needed for the upper storage for the same result, may or may not work at scale, and probably dozens of others I'm forgetting about or not aware of.

To patch this server, we need to get someone drunk

Re: Reminds me of a claim by a sysadmin

"This was some strange usage of the phrase "zero downtime" I was not previously aware of."

Maybe an unusual definition and not the norm, but yeah, I can see his logic. The system/hardware was never down/unpowered even if the OS itself was frequently down :-)

Re: Prison

"and the M6 north of Lancaster."

And likewise, the continuation onto the A74(M)/M74 if carrying on up to Glasgow.

Re: Prison

"a calculated system designed to keep workers from breaking free."

Are you in the USA? That would explain a lot of what you just posted.

Re: 'Exit interview'

"Nah, they didn't give a damn when you were there, and they won't now. Anything you say can only hurt you."

Depends. If the person doing the exit interview is senior enough that they are operating in a bubble disconnected from the realities of the people doing the actual work, it can be an eye opened. My employer, a couple of years ago, ran an "anonymised" survey. Mostly it was genuinely treated as anonymous by the respondents and caused some serious ructions (and improvements!!) in the company because the C-suite had no idea how people really felt. Staff turnover has dropped dramatically in the last year or so.

Re: 'Exit interview'

Using "them" or "they" as a pronoun in the singular has been around a long, long time. Even from long, long before people started choosing to insist on it's use instead of him or her.

Competition watchdog accuses Google of abusing ad dominance

Goofle don't know much about me....

...because if they did, the Google search home page would be constantly asking my iof I want to "upgrade" to Chrome browser. They don't support or provide binaries for Chrome on FreeBSD. Supposedly, the KNOW all about me and even have headers from my page request freely giving them the information of which browser and OS I'm running. And yet they still use their search page to push an advert at me for their own product, which their own data gathering behemoth is telling them I can't use.

So yes, based on that one instance, they are cross-marketing in preference to others. I've never seen a Google Search home page ad for Edge (which I also can't use) :-)

Starlink U-turns, will block X in Brazil after all

...and he took rather a lot of money from the Saudis for this X/Twitter venture. I wonder how the repayments are going?

"it's a very Musky colon"

Checks poster handle. Yep, that's what I thought :-)

(and I'm really hoping "colon" wasn't just a typo)

Do look up! NASA unfurls massive shiny solar sail in orbit

Re: - unless they crack cryogenics as well. ®

Unless you are talking with someone who works in foot/lbs per square chain, in which case it can get a bit tricky :-)

US govt halts medical study into Havana Syndrome, cites 'coercion' of participants

Re: I Thought I Had a Solution to My Woes for a split-second

"Do the athletes that come last in the Track & field events suffer the same attacks and do they get hounded to apologise ???"

Here in the UK, an athlete coming last is a bit meh! But, coming spectacularly last can make one a hero, for a few weeks. Eg Eddie the Eagle. Although to be fair, he did have some disadvantages and didn't actually do that badly out of it. The wiki page is a worth a quick read :-)

Spamouflage trolls pretend to be American patriots on X, TikTok ahead of US presidential election

if it's so obvious...

...it does make one wonder if this is just the camouflage for the "real" "fake" accounts that are doing the actual damage. These are easy to spot, so most think they are inept and there's nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, the real disinfo is far more subtle and anyway, the "inept" accounts aren't just cover and distraction, but still have a real effect on some of the more hard of thinking types anyway. Win-win.

Re: "...pretending to be patriots"

"pretending to be patriots"

And every single one wears an enamelled metal flag badge/pin on their lapel. It's well past the stage where it's meaningless now because not wearing one marks you out as a "traitor" or "commie" or something. It no longer means "patriot". It's just a club badge now. Sad really, especially for a country which takes it's flag so seriously to see it downgraded so much.

Elon Musk’s Starlink won't block Elon Musk’s X in Brazil, as required by court order

Aw diddums! Musk got himself in trouble by spouting off and ignoring local law and your answer is for Musks adopted country to go to war on his behalf? Are you fucking serious?

Re: "Free Speech for Me, Not for You"

"Musk – who claims to promote a maximal definition of free speech"

As per your thread title, was it free if it cost $44B for him to get the platform from which to make is "free" speech?. So, not even free for him either :-)

Re: Wobbly pyramids.

"Then Starlink is an SPV that I don't think SpaceX owns,"

FWIW, Starlink is a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX Musk owns 42% of SpaceX by equity and 79% of voting shares. He has 79% ownership in Xitter, although how much of that is collateral against loan to fund the buy out is another matter. By comparison, he only has about 13% ownership of Tesla (what most of the world know him for) although he's aiming to get that back up to about 25%.

So yeah, the "fig leaf" thing :-)

NASA confirms who is flying and who is not on SpaceX Crew Dragon

Re: Lots to check

Or it's the software updates being uploaded to the ZX Spectrum that controls all the critical systems. Were there reports of flashing red/blue around the display borders?

Techie made a biblical boo-boo when trying to spread the word

Worst case, poor caching in the application program and he used the same filename for the audio file so the caching system just went "oh, I already have that file", no filesize, check sums, date/time stamp checking etc. System caching would have been more discriminating. I suppose it's possible that if they are doing multiple jobs at once, different numbers of computers might be being shifted in and out of a job pool depending on priorities of jobs and it saves passing the audio file around multiple times.

NHS dangles £1.5B carrot to be outfitted with everything from PCs to printers

Re: Costs

Cost reflect the environment it's used in, the expected failure rate (due to users/environment) and the required lifespan of and support for the equipment. If a customer buys kit with an OEM support shelf life of 5 years and we're in years 3 now, then that means carrying spares for an extra 3 -5 years (the OEM migh only carry the spares for EOL+3, ie standard max warrenty period, with a short tail after that). It's even more pronounced in military contracts where they commonly want 10 years or more of support. Speed and quality of support also factors in the upfront costs too.

A notable one of our contracts includes support for some IT kit supplied to military that went OEM EOL over 5 years ago now. It's getting much more expensive to maintain it so we frequently need to do board level repairs that would normally have been swap-outs, and anything faulty stays in stores so bits can be scavenged to extend the "life" of the new/old stock spares. (part of the reason is that the system as a whole only works with certain kit, as specified by the systems designers at the start, and no options were allowed for to replace one model with a newer model, no drivers etc)

Microsoft decides it's a good time for bad UI to die

Re: "the more evolved Settings"

Yes, that was what stood out to me the most too. Settings is not more evolved. It's a new creating that is evolving. It's by no means evolved to where it is fully functional yet. It might *look* like it fits in better with the general design ethos of the GUI, but that's as much credit as I will give it. (and no, I don't agree with the general design ethos of the GUI as it is now, too much confusion in the layout and not enough emphasis given on what is clickable, the entire visual "appeal", (pale grey text anyone? How stupid, and possibly a disability access breach in some legal jurisdictions).

The current MS "design ethos" seems to be dumb it down and remove stuff instead of doing the hard task of working out how to make it actually work.

Re: MS has history of fixing what is not broke

"Windows Server 2008 was about right. After that things got moved around and white space dominated."

When learning about publishing and page layout, it's emphasised how important white-space is to guide the reader from place to place, paragraph to paragraph etc. Os obviously the extension to this is that if white-space is good, more white-space must be better, right? Right?

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Re: Default User is Administrator

"I used to have that, but setup al lthe machines I needed to with them as a user and an admin account I knew."

That's ok so long as you are the administrator :-)

But don't forget, there are things the Administrator account can't do, only MS can access or change them. Some sort of "super" Administrator account they won't let us mere mortals access.

Re: To sum up

One of the issue I have to deal with is laptops, usually after an OEM warranty repair, default to US instead of UK keyboard. It take s a wander through at least three different parts of "Settings" to sort that after a re-install. It's reaching the point where this issue may have to be pushed up the chain so the guys doing the autopilot shit can take it into account. Or complain to the OEM that their repair techs are shit and not doing their jobs properly because they frequently forget to set the generic language motherboards to the correct locate[*]

[*] Yes, this is an issue. I've done that sort of work, and the field tech should have the OEM tools to set up a new mother board correctly, eg embedding the correct systems serial number and any other localising functions, up to an including making sure the correct, usually latest, firmware is applied to the UEFI and any integrated devices.

Re: "If Microcrap really decided that the "bad UI" should die"

Not to mention the fad for pale grey text on a slightly paler grey background and links that are not marked as such in any meaningful or visible way!

365 is currently hiccuping, in the UK at least.

There's a lot to be said for /etc and /usr/local/etc :-)

I wonder how hard it would be for Windows to have the equivalent with a system and user registry? Even if "just" a merge at boot time.

Green Berets storm building after compromising its Wi-Fi

Re: milatiry graed haxx0rin teh wifis

"But the comment on making this public is well-taken. Either someone overstepped or it's seen as suitably basic (ie more notable for not having it) but still useful for impressing the yokels. Could be a recruiting effort then."

NATO exercises are almost always dual purposed to demonstrate to Putin that attacking a NATO member might not be a good idea. The war in Ukraine has brought to the fore the latest changes on the battlefield such as drone usage[*] and digital comms/hacking etc., so it's quite likely that this is just a glimpse at what NATO capabilities are for Putins benefit.

* especially huge numbers of consumer drones for visual and electronic surveillance.

SpaceX grounded after fumbling Falcon 9 landing for first time in years

Re: Weather conditions at the landing site.

"It would be interesting to know what the weather conditions were like at the landing site."

From what I heard, fairly mild.

Re: Won't take long

It looked to me like it came in a little quicker than usual. So potentially a combination of a weakened leg which potentially might have been ok for a few more landings, plus coming in a little "hot" and possibly even the barge was on the rise due to waves all coming together at once to increase the landing impact.

Re: SpaceX grounded after fumbling Falcon 9 landing for first time in years

From the camera angle of the landing, it looked right-leaning to me. Maybe it was just getting too old to do the job properly and felt it was time to retire?

You'd rather Space Farce was in charge?

Re: FAA over reaction?

"SpaceX need to state that each mission will "attempt booster recovery" so that a non mission-critical failure that does not endanger life or property does not lead to grounding of the entire fleet."

Maybe Boeing could try that trick? On the other hand, crashing aircraft full of passengers and doors falling off might be classed as mission critical.

Re: Over-reaction

Yes, because apart from anything else, this booster was on it's 23rd flight and longevity of boosters and their component parts is still a guessing game. Materiels science and past experience can only get you so far when you are subjecting materials to previously unknown patterns of stress over far longer time periods and repetitions than has been done before.

As others have mentions, it's the first landing failure in something over 260 consecutive launches. Eventually there was bound to be failure even if just from wear and tear. Now they can go over the affected parts with a fine tooth comb and set a new "service interval" on said parts. And then somewhere down the line they'll likely find something else fails after, say 30 launch/landing cycles because now they replace the the legs (or part thereof) every 15 launches.

Other industries went through the same processes and eventually set service and maintenance intervals to suit, either for reputational reasons or mandated regulatory reasons. SpaceX (and other also developing similar re-usable launch vehicles) have those lessons and significant advances in simulations and materials science to work with, but there are still unknowns and actual real world stresses to learn from.