Posts by Brian 3

China lands mysterious reusable spacecraft after 276-day trek

Re: peaceful use of space

I was going to comment on this, too. Always keep in mind, there is not a government on earth that won't make violent actions "for the sake of peace".

It's what government does, after all.

FCA mulls listing rules after Hauser blames 'Brexit idiocy' for Arm's New York IPO

BRUNT, FCA!

Did anyone else read FCA and think it was about time the Ferengi Commerce Authority started cracking down?

Your security failure was so bad we have to close the company … NOT!

Re: Keyboard issues

I don't know how many PS2 ports I saw blown out from people plugging in hot, too. Some motherboards just were not OK with it.

CEO sorry after telling staff to 'leave pity city' over bonuses

I wonder how much of the "not hitting target" was engineered to be that way - much how IBM's sales got all mixed up conveniently to the execs' bonux. It's pretty easy to recategorize sales and whatnot!

Re: Remember folks.

You said "dollars outweigh sense.", but in reality it's that dollars outweigh morality and social (non-legally binding) obligation.

Chinese company claims it's built batteries so dense they can power electric airplanes

Re: Those are rookie numbers

Didn't you read the article? They're shaped like tiny nets!

Brit cops rapped over app that recorded 200k phone calls

Re: Australia

You must be LEO affiliated to think that it should be in any way acceptable for law enforcement to break the law. If what you suggest is true, then why isn't there a statutory exemption in place in this regard? Citizen right mean precious little already, you think we should just stop pretending they exist at all?

Does anyone else feel like the "used on 432 phones and 1024 officers downloaded the app" and it also says 1015 staff downloaded and used the app? So that would mean that it was used by 2471 phones/devices? All of them, recording everything?

Why is the person who deployed this not responsible directly? It was an accident? That they didn't do their job properly and know the software they were deploying to thousands of staff? Whoever selected this program and no doubt RAMMED it through needs their own ramming.

Starlink opens final frontier for radio astronomers

Re: Sorry but no.

He's talking about population that matters, mate. Not city folk.

Theranos founder Holmes ordered to jail after appeal snub

Re: Never thought I'd see the day

o contrare mon ami, those cabinet members and former generals are where now? They knew it was a risky venture, but not to themselves. Airtight "they lied to us!" excuses.

Tupperware looking less airtight than you'd think

I'd say the death knell was when tupperware stopped with the classic design and moved into a bunch of thinner, cheaper, worse and more disposable containers. The original ones were skookum, fit for purpose and didn't shatter if you dropped it full of sugar or whatever. Lids made a nice snap and didn't have the modern tendency to wear overly hard on the sealing edge. Modern plastic containers are shamefully lacking in comparison.

I still use an original tupperware strainer (the yellow ones)

Child hit by car among videos 'captured by Tesla vehicles, shared among staff'

Re: We need stronger laws

Don't forget how lenient courts almost always are with companies that "lose" documents and recordings they're told not to lose. Or just as often, intentionally delete after being told they must be retained.

CAN do attitude: How thieves steal cars using network bus

Re: And it's not just the number of wires

I'm calling bollocks here. I work on cars every day for my living. Wiring harness in a typical car is more like maybe 20-30kg at most. Normal couple relay boxes included. My colleague Dave sells VW harnesses all the time because they're shite. It will all fit in a medium cardboard box and is easily carried by 1 person. Most scrap yards don't bother dismantling them except the engine harness (maybe 5-10kg) - and only because they've removed the engine as it's crushed for aluminum. Your 100kg figure, only if you add all the bollocks computers and distribution boxen in modern cars (say a fully loaded caravan). Including a set of video screens and blu-ray players and more bollocks like the "distribution boxes" under the fricking seats, you say all the switches but you must be including the blower fans and actuator motors and all kinds of things to get 220lbs of stuff. All mostly plastic, which will never go away. You really think EVERY DOOR needs it's own separate computer? Several if it has "power" doors. Tailgate has 2 or 3 if it's "power" operated.

Even with a computer for every door, they still put all the wires to the window switch same as in 1980 you know? All the way to the driver's door from all the other doors with electric windows. Even though, yes, the signals all end up going through the computers. To avoid this wiring I see many newer cars put the window switches in the middle of the car so there is only 1 bank. But now the dealer can shake down the body shop when it's time to replace your door after a bang-up. And I don't really SEE the weight savings you were suggesting.

80 quid? Bollocks! My local dealer is paying $380 a ton (CDN). That's $600+ per car, another $4-600 for catalysts and maybe tire $ or alloy$ too.

This is a totally false economy - you'll still need however many amps at the back "distribution box" (think those are free?) so the feed wire will just be a big gauge. All these "smart" distribution relay boxes are insanely expensive, by the way, and have ridiculous failure rates. I bet the 19-23 generation of cars will be super extra dodgy with fake components everywhere.

What is needed is to stop putting a whole load of inappropriate tat in cars.

Smile! UK cops reckon they've ironed out gremlins with real-time facial recog

Re: 1 in 6000?

100% agreed. 1 in 6000 means DOZENS of false arrests daily. I'm only OK with this if the arresting officer and their supervisor also gets an arrest charge on their permanent record, for the same offence, for every single false arrest made.

China aims to pair J-20 stealth fighter with 'loyal wingman' battle drone

Am I the only one who heard the headline and thought of these things on the same lines as the exploding helmets for Chinese infantry? They're not for shooting down the enemy. They're more for preventing defection of valuable equipment?

Boeing's first-ever crewed mission in Starliner ISS spacecraft delayed to late July

Does anyone else get the feeling like Boeing are playing regulatory catch-up after getting caught with no pants on with the shenanigans they've been pulling last decade or so? Like just shooting from the hip this whole time and now they're like oh fuck, documentation? Standards? They're going to check for that? Uhh.. yeah, we have that.. Hold on a sec!

For so long we've been conditioned to think that only big massive companies can make stuff like aerospace successfully, but the last 20 years says strongly that they can't really do it. There's certainly no reasonable excuse to trust them to "self-certify" any more than you'd trust the guy at the street corner with a spray bottle and squeegee to "self-certify". The big company has so much to lose, yet they have nothing to lose by lying and cheating, because there's so much room to play it off. Worst case scenario they have a relative pittance of a fine - that will just get tacked on to a "cost plus" contract. Maybe they even have to set up some poor sap as a fall guy, but chances are they won't even need to go that far!

BOFH: The Board members are looking very ill these days

And really, what IS the assurance that none of the petroleum used in the vinyl came from animals? None! Or is their argument that they were already dead when they found them....

Potatoes in space: Boffins cook up cosmic concrete for off-world habitats

Sigh.

"Scientists at the famed institution have created a new material, they call "StarCrete", which is not made from actual stars,"

Maybe the hydrogen isn't made from stars but the rest of it certainly is.

NASA spots first evidence of an active volcano on Venus – in a big pile of CD-ROMs

Re: Old data new tricks

No, that's not right. Sometimes AI just shoots from the hip (the back side of the hip!) and goes full fabrication, here's your steaming fresh analysis!

Silicon Valley Bank seized by officials after imploding: How this happened and why

How about that crazy overinvestment and collapse of China's real estate market? And quite a non-zero number of banks.

Cop warrant orders Ring to cough up footage from inside this guy's home

Re: Video on Ring's servers is the problem

No. You NEVER allow the cops into your house!!!! That is LITERALLY the same as permission to search your house. They don't even need a warrant at that point. You let them in!

Lonestar bags $5m in seed funding for lunar datacenter project

I saw the title and thought it sounds like good work, growing seeds on the moon.

Four charged with swiping $1m+ of gear from Microsoft cargo trucks

So basically, if they hadn't registered the devices AT HOME then the CHP had NOTHING to go on? They wouldn't have had the warrants to track the cell phone locations without tracing the stolen goods first.

Ex-Tweep mocked by Musk for asking if he'd actually been fired

Re: Not necessarily……

What does Elon pay per post on here? Asking for a friend who's stuck at home...

Aussie tech worker payroll scheme operators found guilty of tax fraud

Re: 6 years?!

They'll probably get less than that because there always seems to be a BIG quantity discount on white collar crimes these days.

Intel buries news of GPU cuts and delays in low-key Friday post

"Kicking" Pat pretty much got lucky when he took over - the "Core" skunkworks basically did a complete hail mary for intel at that time. I don't think he's going to be so lucky this time.

And what happened, Reg??? Why aren't you calling him by his well-earned "Kicking" title?

US Marshals Service leaks ‘law enforcement sensitive information’ in ransomware incident

Re: Am I reading this right?

It was no doubt detected the same day because when it was done shipping out the info and encrypting everything the machine probably stopped working.

That, or it's the one machine full of their dirty deals.

White Castle collecting burger slingers' fingerprints looks like a $17B mistake

Re: ...and just how are people expected to log into a system?

A signature is NOT a biometric marker and handwriting analysis is not admissible as evidence because it's hokum.

In the first place, biometric means it's data based on measurements or analysis of the subject's body, and NOT their writing style (a learned behavior). Biometric data can be retrieved from a corpse or an uncooperative "subject" but try getting a signature from a dead guy!

Unplug that Anker battery pack now: House blaze sparks recall

Their solution to a burney battery is to have them all collected into boxes with a bunch of other lithium packs for disposal? No more house fires, just stores and collection facilities eh?

Hi, Pakistan? You do know anyone can edit Wikipedia, right? You don't have to ask

Re: >>convince other editors<<

Ironically, sites with massive tools are probably OK; sites with females not wearing head appliances are more likely what they're beefing about.

FTC prescribes GoodRx a $1.5m pill after 'sharing health info' with web giants

Re: Sold private health data after promising customers not to?

and the fine should extend to the company officers personally as well as anyone involved in negotiating the deal in the first place. It needs to stop being okay to build corporations with the specific intent to break existing laws or circumvent regulations using flimsy arguments.

Tech job bloodbath comes to IBM, CFO links layoffs to Kyndryl, Watson Health

..and they deeply enjoy to savor the various delicate flavors, such as by-age, by-gender or with-children....

Wyoming's would-be ban on sale of electric vehicles veers off road

Re: This iis a public safety concern.

Not an EV problem, but ENTIRELY a planning and preparedness problem. It barely even gets cold there, what are you whining about? Plus, the typical altitude of Wyoming is over a mile above sea level making the cold more tolerable than it would be at or near sea level.

Did you know that european semi trucks often have more powerful engines than north american models? They're not narrower either, so what do you mean by "bigger semi rigs" ? You think they don't have B trains in EU?

If it's REALLY cold, then it doesn't matter if you have a combustion engine, because the exhaust moisture will condense and freeze in the exhaust system, plug up the exhaust and stall the engine. Been there, done that.

What you really want are plenty of waterproof matches, and some tea candles. When it's -46C and the wind is 110+KPH then you will feel the cold.

Cisco warns it won't fix critical flaw in small business routers despite known exploit

Re: Did I read that right? - software support

True Lawyer Speak: "No one made them..."

Health insurer Aflac blames US partner for leak of Japanese cancer policy info

It not being considered at the outset is simply no less than malpractice and negligence. If your business is the storage of important and valuable things, it's not a question of whether or not someone will come to get some of it, but rather how frequently attempts will be made.

Just more "take an obvious outcome and pretend you didn't see it coming because it's to do with the INTERNET so it's totally different than before".

John Deere signs right to repair agreement with US ag lobbyists

Here's an idea:

Make a trade marking for products that were produced without any John Deere products involved! A sort of certification like "Organic".

"DEERE FREE" ?

New York gets right-to-repair law – after some industry-friendly repairs to the rules

Re: Perspective

Cars WERE generally up to that level. However, now we have "CVT"s and "dual clutch gearboxes" and "high pressure turbos on tiny blocks". Headlamp assemblies that are over $2000 are not unusual. How long will an "active electronic engine mount" last compared to a rubber bush? Does it matter if a starter is only $200, if you have to have the whole drivetrain out to change it? ($2000 labor)

Automakers are actually quite decent at making them reliable - the new trick is fitting the reliability ONLY within the realm of warranty while making it as difficult and uneconomical to service as possible.

FCC calls for mega $300 million fine for massive US robocall campaign

So a repeat repeat offender eh? Because they didn't take away all his toys properly for his wrongs. $300 million may not be enough. The fine needs to be full refunds to those scammed plus the $300 million fine!

Japan, Australia to bolster cyber-defenses, maybe offensive capacity too

I think he means marketing will get better (for regular people) if they start doing more and more of it in the metaverse where it won't bother us so much.

Intel offers Irish staff a three-month break from being paid

... when that amount will barely buy you a coffee.

Judge tells Amazon: Stop retaliating against employees

Re: It's contempt of court to disobey

It's not harsh. it's the opposite. amazon originally (and quite blatantly) walked all over the labor relations laws. It's not like they invented some new ways of doing so - it's all old hat stuff here. Executives SHOULD ALREADY be serving jail time for conspiring to break federal labor laws. Why do we constantly see the courts serving up these "court ordered" "reminders" that they aren't to be breaking the law again - usually for a period of time.

Vonage to pay $100m for making it nearly impossible to cancel internet phone services

But how much money did they make doing these things? I bet that $100 mill is just a license fee in comparison.

Yeah according to wiki annual revenue in 2020 was like $1.25 billion. They were doing this to all and sundry customers so there is simply no way $100 million covers the refunds. What about punitive damages? They were in the wrong. Why does the FTC think it is okay to license corporate wrongdoing?

No, I will not pay the bill. Why? Because we pay you to fix things, not break them

I grew 180 lbs of chiles this year! I'm ready.

(in a 12x16 foot garden)

Boffins grow human brain cells to play Pong

Re: Does no-one read science fiction any more?

We've fixed that! They are using only the finest organic free-range brain cells. Fair trade certified! Though I'm not sure what they promised the cells in return for cooperation?

DoJ ‘very disappointed’ with probation sentence for Capital One hacker Paige Thompson

Re: Whose fault is it?

Actually it does make it okay, legally speaking, in most countries.

Google burns few hours of profit to disappear location privacy lawsuit

These cut price settlements are a crime against humanity. The minimum price of the settlement MUST BE at least equal to the total profit of the venture involved in the wrongdoing. Otherwise it is just a cost of doing business and no fault claimed? BS. No more!

Actual real-life hoverbike makes US debut at Detroit Auto Show

If you watch the video there you will see that this isn't drivable - it's a ridable remote control hexacopter. It's piloted by a guy standing in the background.

Iceotope: No need to switch servers to swap air-cooled for liquid-cooled

So they are suggesting 1 rack of servers uses far more than 1kW of power just for the fans? So much more that the energy cost of the liquid cooling apparati are covered by what is excess of 1kW?