Posts by Andy The Hat

UK ponders USB-C as common charging standard

Re: What next?

"cyclists appear to be able to fit whatever flashing lights they like. I think standard bike lights should be a thing. None of them should flash."

technically in the UK road users are not allowed to dazzle oncoming traffic so badly set or super bright cycle lights are illegal to use. Flashing lights *are* legal but only if used alongside a legal, permanently lit lamp (some lamps use a single lit LED specifically to circumvent that rule).

This isn't a case of being legal or illegal, it's a simple case of no enforcement. Much like the muppets who demand a 20mph limit to control traffic because "nobody sticks to the 30mph limit" but can't see that the 30mph isn't being policed ...

Re: What next?

... or you have a 25W wall wart and need a 40W, or 60W or 80W or perhaps you have a 20W device and don't want to lug around a 240W brick ...

Welcome to the world where device specific wall warts are replaced with new "greener" wall warts that most consumers will have to guess whether they will or will not work with a device and will only find out when they get home ...

And before I get the downvotes about "it'll just being a slower when charging a device", if the device is discharged, has a bad battery or no battery at all and you need to power it, a too-low power USB-C will not work.

One-year countdown to 'biggest Ctrl-Alt-Delete in history' as Windows 10 approaches end of support

Re: Out of support == no internet.

my prediction is on the first patch tuesday after EOL "they" will "discover" and issue a patch for a major security hole in Win10 ltsc just to scare the crap out of other users.

First time's the charm: SpaceX catches a descending Super Heavy Booster

Re: There's a few telling things here

"Tight regulation" does not have to be the same as "bureaucratic regulation".

The FAA is built for one test launch of significant test vehicle a year, not ten or one hundred and can't cope. SpaceX are currently fighting their corner on the sharp end of that bureaucracy but, as more companies increase launch cadence and/or start to adopt the rapid iteration methodology, the FAA will be completely overwhelmed.

The FAA need to be re-structured for future needs, not expect time schedules and requirements to stay the same as those of 40 years ago.

I think that was the quietest I've ever heard Tim on the EA channel! :-)

I do admit to hoping they didn't try the catch as I had no faith that they could do it ...

If Dell's Qualcomm-powered Copilot+ PC is typical of the genre, other PCs are toast

Re: Is it my age ...?

What's it like in 6809-land? I remember my mate getting all excited because he had been given a sample 6809 board with a graphics chip that could draw 1million pixels per second! Most of us were fiddling around with green screen vector graphics driven by a PDP at the time :-)

Is it my age ...?

Ort does that keyboard shot remind me of a Sinclair QL - except that had shallow cups for the fingertips on the key caps.

The problem with the copilot (or any other AI) search button is that you have no idea where the result is coming from. I looked up something scientific the other day on a normal search and immediately disregarded the top three hits as they were from "natural health and wellbeing" sites and talking complete woo-woo marketing tosh. If that data had been amalgamated into an AI result I would not have be able to discount the invalid information as it would just be mixed into the luke warm "information soup" spilling from whichever AI data blender is in vogue with no way of ensuring validity or verifying accuracy. AI buttons may have their uses but how long will it be before we forget why knowing the source of material matters?

Embattled users worn down by privacy options? Let them eat code

Re: yes, yes and thrice, yes!

As I see it, the judgement says old data can't be used - 10 days, 10 weeks, 10 years ... what is old? I believe the GDPR only refers to outdated data. In the UK version the ICO guidelines state

"The UK GDPR does not dictate how long you should keep personal data. It is up to you to justify this, based on your purposes for processing. You are in the best position to judge how long you need it." so plenty of holes to wander through there ...

And then there's the use of restricted data sets. Does the GDPR define those data sets? Again the ICO states

" If you do not need to identify individuals, you should anonymise the data so that identification is no longer possible."

Unless meta are supplying raw data to advertisers what data is actually allowed when consented under GDPR? Having said that the article sort of suggests the passing of identifiable data as Meta is reported as saying "it's the advertisers responsibility ..." at one point)

Re: yes, yes and thrice, yes!

but I think you'll find that all 138 companies listed will have "legitimate interest" - they are all making money out of you - so all need to be individually listed in a helpful, easy to click series of check buttons for the user to consent to individually ... GDPR was never about actual user control, it was only about the appearance of user control because data makes money, money makes tax ... so there is no interest to actually stop that data flow.

Tesla Cybertruck recalled again. This time, a software fix for backup camera glitch

Not a problem in the Uk as it has to have mirrors fitted https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mirrors-on-motor-vehicles/summary-of-requirements-for-mirrors-on-motor-vehicles

Cloudflare beats patent troll so badly it basically gives up

Re: It depends on your definition

I totally agree. Patents were there so the originator could profit from the development and sale of their invention without competition for a limited time. This encourages investment in R&D.

If you sell patents on to an organisation who simply holds that patent, they are neither the originator of the patent nor able to profit from the development/sale of their invention so have no interest in paying back R&D costs.

John Deere accused of being full of manure with its right-to-repair promises

Would this be the part of barefaced lies like "we cannot disable JD equipment remotely" which was questioned as it was followed by "The Russians stole Ukranian JD equipment and when requested we were able to disable it remotely ..."

Revenge for being fired is best served profitably

Slight aside but a colleague was talking to another new ex-RAF colleague in the '90s. The subject of Spitfire (IIRC) engines came up and the fact that the RAF was scrambling around for parts to keep the few they had running.

"How many do they need?"

""What?"

"How many, new, still crated Merlin engines do you need?"

"How ... what?"

"Scrapman in Scotland bought a load years ago off the RAF, they didn't want them and they're great engines for tractor pullers ... he's still got several."

A phone call was made and much, much more money than scrap value changed hands ...

Harvard duo hacks Meta Ray-Bans to dox strangers on sight in seconds

Re: Black Mirror

If what these researchers have done doesn't wake people up and reflect on the tip of the iceberg of what both Big Brother/organised criminals can actually do now, I don't know what does ...

There has been a major backlash in the UK against routine police surveillance of political marches, strikes and that sort of thing. Up until a few years ago this would result in a dataset of thousands of pictures of law-abiding people on marches or protests which would/should only be of relevance if those faces could be matched to datasets of other illegal activity. There has been a lot of screaming about removal of those pictures as they are of law abiding citizens engaging in lawful activities.

Now it seems, not only can those datasets be collected (it even appears that the current Government are condoning and even encouraging their use) but probably pumped through facial recognition systems in almost real time to be identified. At this point "we have deleted the images of law abiding citizens" would be a valid statement to privacy campaigners but a more accurate completion would be " and no longer require the images as we have identified the individuals, have a full personal, financial and social profiles, who they talk to and where they were last summer."

Microsoft hits go on Windows 11 24H2: Fresh features, bugs, and a whole lotta AI

Re: Clippy - "You Appear To Be Looking At A Picture Of Two Girls & A Stick Of Celery.......Why?"

don't for get the egg whisk :-)

hypocrisy?

"the most compatible Windows operating system ever."

... but is, according to that very same provider, incompatible with a massive proportion of existing hardware thus requiring the upgrade of that hardware.

Now, which is it Microsoft? Compatible (and you are deliberately not supplying it for older hardware) or incompatible (and you are lying through your marketing teeth)?

After 3 years, Windows 11 has more than half Windows 10's market share

Perhaps, just perhaps, some company bean counters are putting 2 and 2 together and realising that, instead of dumping perfectly good hardware and software systems just to kneel at the alter of Microsoft, being green actually saves a shedload of money ...

Ok, so most will avoid the "being green" bit. But the point is that *any* software company brazen enough to have the marketing ploy of demanding that users upgrade hardware *just* to run their software, which is already proven to run on existing hardware, to gain the benefit of few, if any, changes those users actually want or need and certainly didn't ask for, is just asking for a severe kicking from its customers.

SpaceX Falcon 9 grounded again after second stage hits wrong part of ocean

Re: The Aerospace Corp derived a rule for this...

On the basis that there seem to have been 3 completely different faults (a second stage O2 leak, a landing leg failure on an old booster and whatever this was but relates to the timing or power of a deorbit burn) I guess your conspiracy theory has very little to support it.

Windows 11 Patch Tuesday preview is a glitchy disaster

Re: Windows 11 Patch Tuesday preview is a glitchy disaster

"testing"?

May I express my most sincere contrafibularites on the expectation of similar semantics appearing in any MS development procedure.

Starlink-branded hardware reportedly found amid wreckage of downed Russian drone

Re: Space Karen

Surprising how long it took before commentards ignored the war, people dying and the terrible threats of a dictator, degenerating the conversation into the most important thing in their lives - petty Musk bashing.

Microsoft on a roll for terrible rebranding with Windows App

Re: just cow

Cows produce less crap

Green recycling goals? Pending EU directive could hammer used mobile market

the device that requires a 240W PD supply cares as it can't operate to specification with a lower powered charger ... and the user is annoyed as the device doesn't operate according to specification which means that new user will dump their lower power USB-C charger in favour of a higher power one. Unless all USB-C chargers are made equal, in these days of chasing ever-higher power devices there will still be a dump-the-old requirement.

Which version of USB-C is mandated - a 20W, 10W, 5W? PD spec up to 240W for all, including low power devices perhaps?

As upgrades happen, this potentially this just replaces one set of used wall warts with another.

CISA boss: Makers of insecure software must stop enabling today's cyber villains

but I think you'll find that more personalised ads, personal data capture, increased revenue and reduced production costs fully offsets requirements for security. To steal a green euphemism, call it "secure-washing" or "window cleaning"

A huge week for satnav as both China and Europe make generational launches

Where am I?

Did the Europeans remember to wind the clocks up on this pair?

SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission completes first commercial spacewalk

Space stand?

It may be a publicity jaunt but that lot have more balls than a chinese takeaway ...

As for calmly pushing the hatch seal back into place whilst exposed to the vacuum of space ... twice! "Houston, did we pack a tube of Stixall?"

Thanks, Edward Snowden: You propelled China to quantum networking leadership

Re: Not Snowden

"half the population does not believe in facts nor Science"

A statement which ironically ironically a complete fallacy ... belief infers a lack of knowledge.

Science is a process not a belief system (except if you watch Sabine Hossenfelder's recent obliteration of some dodgy papers which do look more like belief and hope that nobody will read them before the next grant cheque arrives).

Facts are the current state of knowledge, not a belief.

Thinking The Great God Malcolm created penquins while on holiday in Torremolinos is a belief. Thinking that Margaret on Facebook (cleaner at Sainsburys and part time expert in global pandemics) can cure Covid by reading your aura on-line and chanting in the bath for the small fee of £499 is a belief.

You cannot believe in Science. You cannot believe in facts. But you can choose to ignore both and believe ignorance is bliss.

.

Openreach pitches its tent as Ofcom preps review of broadband market rules

The Government rules of engagement say that Ofcom has to upgrade x% of subscribers to fiber. Those subscribers are predominantly in city areas and some are easier to do that others so delivery can be manipulated to give the correct statistics. But ask yourself, where do you see VM or Cityfibre installing outside of an urban environment? That's not because of a pointless Government dictat but because of cheap, dense infrastructure installation where they can chop through existing services and let Openreach/electricity supplier/water board take the flak (or all three in a local, resurfaced the month before, housing estate). They do not care about less profitable subscribers but at least Openreach have to supply most of them ...

Be careful what you wish for.

Huawei debuts triple-folding Mate XT smartphone

" asked tech companies to respond to lawful requests."

Excellent, nothing wrong with that - do what the law allows.

"If they don't cooperate, then there's a private conversation I need to have with government about what we accept or what I need to do my job more effectively,"

So that means we are not even considering the normal procedure of taking the proper and appropriate lawful actions against an organisation for failing to respond to lawful requests. Instead, the apparently proper, legal and democratic approach is to take actions decided on by "private conversation" out of the glare of the voting public. Sorry, but that bloke should not be paid with public funds and should be sacked now.

A nice cup of tea rewired the datacenter and got things working again

"No, it probably couldn't run Crysis. It's a wonder it could run anything."

Oh ye of little faith! Have you never run Colossal Cave on an RM380Z? Or an entire finance system on a similar system that has been "upgraded" to dual drives?

I even remember writing a simulator to plot the the motion of charged particles in combined electric and magnetic fields on one of those.

We ran a multi-user terminal system that was a set of Z80 boards on a common bus sharing a single 8" boot/storage floppy ...

Believe it or not, most operating systems fitted on a single floppy disk with space to spare and we didn't insist on pretty graphical front ends, just tools that did the job.

Just pulling my blanket over my knees and warming my hands on my cocoa ...

Faulty valve sent Astrobotic's Peregrine lander straight back to Earth's atmosphere

Another helium valve ...

Perhaps there needs to be some coordinated research into helium valving in general? I know spaceflight is hard but it seems that helium valving is particularly problematic ... unless they're all sourcing components from the same supplier (in-house in this case does not mean all parts are manufactured in house)?

Brit teachers are getting AI sidekicks to help with marking and lesson plans

So I presume all kids do homework on a pc? err no

I presume all remaining homework is in a well presented and easily scanned form? err no

I presume once scanned (taking three times as long as it would have taken to mark it by hand in the first place) the handwriting and diagrams in the scans are then decipherable by AI into something resembling valid language? No again

So finally the teacher has to go through the scans manually, mark them digitally and presto! an AI marked script ... well, as soon as the original script has had the marks and corrections transcribed onto it

Perhaps a visit to an actual classroom may be useful? Or perhaps all teaching should be tested using multi-guess technologies which may be total rubbish but can be marked easily using existing technologies ... I mean new AI technology

<blows raspberry> ...

out of his r's presumably

New Zealand minister OKs Kim Dotcom extradition to US

Re: Paying Trump for a release

Unless you've been in a timewarp you will note that the original charges were filed in 2012 and, despite the world suffering an awful lot from orangeness since then, KDC is still on the run ...

Twitter must pay over half a million to unfairly dismissed Irish exec

Interesting.

I believe under New-Blair introduced UK employment law my employer can (apparently) unilaterally issue me a new contract with three months notice to accept or walk, which appears very similar to what X did (except they gave 3 months severance pay in lieu of notice). Given this judgement, under EU regs you have to be given significant advanced notice of a notice of a unilateral change of contract ... I wonder if this regulation was carried into UK law after B*****it and therefore the interpretation would still apply?

UK's 'electricity superhighway' gets green light just in time for AI to gobble it all up

In Norfolk there are 10m wide swathes being dug up to put in hvdc cables from off-shore windfarms as it wasn't possible to route them anywhere else ... like putting in an undersea interconnect to Sizewell for instance ... and the closest place with national grid capacity for one of them was south of Norwich. Much fighting but "they" got their way. Now "they" are building pylon interconnects to London as the place they are connecting to (with the required capacity as specified in the planning application) doesn't have the required capacity ... The Dutch interconnect windfarms offshore then bring the whole lot onshore from a central point - much cheaper and efficient but apparently we can't do that because there are too many greasy palms involved.

Is Lenovo a blind spot in US anti-China security measures?

On the surface you have the bookies and punters making money from the horses. But underneath you have those trying to knobble the runners ... or not ... But just because you can't find any evidence of wrongdoing obviously doesn't mean it wasn't done, and by stimulating that suspicion, you put the bookies and punters off one horse so their money heads to another ...

Report slams Boeing and NASA over shoddy quality that's delayed SLS blastoff

Re: Tanks

Welding on a steel oxygen tank that's 2mm thick is one thing, potentially welding a 0.5mm LOX tank is something else. Not defending Boeing but you need to see the problem before comparing to average Joe welding up your car ...

NASA pushes back missions to the ISS to buy time for Starliner analysis

Re: Frozen

Apparently in news yesterday it was reported that it has no automated undocking/deorbit ability ... Just "let it go" and it'd sit there which is basically what it's doing now.

Intel: Our balance sheet is a smoking ruin, but we think our new chips work

New technology?

I think not, according to my other half I've been supplying "power via backside power technology" for years.

EVs continue to grow but private buyers are steering clear, say motor trade figures

Re: Naysayer

I was quite astounded to get a lift in a hybrid the other day and found out that it did 38mpg ... My smelly old Fiat will do 52mpg and my older diesel would breach 70mpg ... To me, hybrids are a great idea but mostly implemented to get a green badge ...

That cyber-heist of 2.9B personal records? There's a class-action lawsuit looming for that

Just wondering whether HM Government have a data contract with that organisation or one that uses its APIs?

Remember HMRC had a massive data handling deal with a USA company a few years ago under whatever regulation it was at the time (Max Schrems would know!) because HMRC calculators don't add up as well as American ones ...

NASA pops repair kit in the mail so astronauts can fix leaky ISS telescope

Re: "keep doing groundbreaking science"

I'm amazed that you feel anyone building/supplying the rocket industry is being altruistic. They are basically logistics businesses and businesses exist to make profit.

UK court rules in Intel's favor in R2 Semi power patent case

Re: don't know if that's quite true

"Only lawyers would try to justify an obvious decision with double-speak.

'Your case of the neighbor's pig flying into your window to harass you is sound. If only pigs could fly.' "

I think you completely misunderstand the case.

The patent exists, there is no question of that, the pig does fly and did collide with a window but should he have been let out of his pen?

The UK case looked at Intel's infringement of the cited patent and also the validity of that patent that the claim was based on. Therefore the Judge could rightly declare that as he considers the patent invalid the (perfectly good) claim based on it is lost. I believe the German court assumes that the patent is legally valid then they look into Intel's infringement of that patent, finding for R2, hence the difference in judgement. Simples.

To contest the patent validity in the EU would require another case and a protracted visit to EU patent court.

Re: So, the patents are invalid in the UK

I don't know if that's quite true.

Intel won in the UK as the Judge decided the patent was invalid *but* R2's case for infringement was otherwise sound.

In Germany Intel lost as R2's case was sound but it is not clear whether the Judge looked at the validity of the patent underpinning it. So, hypothetically, if the patent is questioned in Germany the result could be the same as the UK.

Either way, I agree it looks like patent trolling ... Reading the case it appears the patent wording is so loose that R2's lawyers can't even decide what half their descriptions mean and the general description is basically splitting a single output rail switch mode into a multiple buck converter bank with smoothing on individual converters - a design which has been used in various forms for decades.

UK Electoral Commission slapped for basic cybersecurity fails

Re: Methinks the political spin is strong in this one.

If that data is not withheld when individuals opt out of the public register I would question the legitimate use of my data under GDPR.

In line with the article though, two questions

1) was the non-public register data available to Mr Hacker and

2) were those impacted notified in a reasonable time by the organisation concerned?

Given "40million" I'd suggest answers of yes and, to my knowledge as a voter registered on the electoral roll, no.

Which beggars the question, what's the point of pursuing the case under GDPR as, even after the case is closed, those responsible have done nothing to mitigate the situation for those impacted?

If Google or Amazon or whoever ignored a similar situation there'd be baying for blood from all and sundry but, because it's only Government incompetence, it's ok.

'LockBit of phishing' EvilProxy used in more than a million attacks every month

WTF?

"Whoever runs EvilProxy offers ... YouTube videos on how to use the service"

Youtube, "to protect its subscribers", will suspend your account for playing 6 seconds of broadcast radio when demonstrating the testing of a repaired device. They also allow a worldwide scam team to use YT channels to demonstrate how to conduct illegal behaviour uncontested ...

Glad to see where their moral compass points.

Car makers sold people's driving habits, location data for pennies, say US senators

Re: including people's acceleration and braking readings

The point you are making is in relation to the law, the point of the article is in relation to selling data for profit.

Data logging for Big Brother who only "thinks of the kids" is one thing and arguable both ways, surreptitious data logging and selling personal data so the boss can build another swimming pool in the Bahamas is a slightly different point.

French internet cables cut in act of sabotage that caused outages across country

Re: F.T.A.

In the UK it's Openreach speak for "We've identified and put a paint mark on the bit of pavement where the hole is going to be dug ..."

China ponders creating a national 'cyberspace ID'

Re: Just a question...

But the point is it's just an address. Who lives there is, according to the supplier, just the name on the bill. If 24 people live in your address, this "privacy measure" would allow you to all sign on with your unique biometrics. Connecting to a public wi-fi? Just use your state-issued biometric id. Logging onto Facepalm, X(?), your "private" email or whatever - just use that state issued id.

It's great in theory and only becomes a problem when you have something to hide, however minor or insignificant that may be but is disliked by the current state overseers ... like daring to email a jpg of Pooh Bear.