Posts by John Jennings

As Russia wages disinfo war, Ukraine's cyber chief calls for global anti-fake news fight

That Azov was just one of the regiments. Right Sector, C14 and 30 more were identified as 'extreme right wing private maillitias' - by Reuters in 2018... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cohen-ukraine-commentary-idUSKBN1GV2TY

Re: Can we hold our own

... Like the Ghost of Kiev?

Information is as much the fault of lazy people as it is malign governments. ALL governments put out propaganda (especially after the Smith-Munt act was partially repealed by Obama...)

If one parties propaganda is challenged by any other entity, it is mis dis or mal information.... If the propaganda is a State then you get https://www.cisa.gov/mdm

Oh Deere: Farm hardware jailbroken to run Doom

Actually, Lamborghini started off making tractors. The Founder went to Ferarri for a car and Enzo told him to feck off..... So he started to build supercars

True story, I a told.

Lamborguni makes a fine one - https://www.lamborghini-tractors.com/en-eu/

Belarus also - 'bulletproof' - but might be tricky getting spare parts! - http://www.belarus-tractors.co.uk/

And of course good old Massey Fergusson are still around - https://www.masseyferguson.com/en_gb.html (inventors of the original 3 point hitch that revolutionised tractors in the 1930's).

Russian military uses Chinese drones and bots in combat, over manufacturers' protests

Re: This is something that needs paying attention

Not so much - I Ukraine is using them too - I saw the video of a DGI trying to drop a grenade on a russian tank.

Difficult to use ew if both are using the same tech....

Putin threatens supply chains with counter-sanction order

Well.... I wouldnt stand too close to a starlink uplink in a battlezone........

I imagine the russians are using them for target practice- or at least command and control identification.

Re: You want to play hardball?

That dude is more likely to roll out the tactical nukes than withdraw.

Dont assume that a replacement will be less aggressive than the current incumbent. What would the EU & NATO do then?

Re: You want to play hardball?

In your dreams

even this time of year the gas reserves are 20-30 days MAX.

Only longer if all industry consuming oil is shut down - then only another 10-15 days.

Imports from LNG ships might add 10 days (15 with full sutdown).

Re: You want to play hardball?

I think you forgot India - it wants the gas and oil too.

The Russians do have a competitive market available to them.

Re: You want to play hardball?

Germany (and Italy) have storage facilities for approx 45 days. However, the reserves are at around 20% - typical after winter - so say 15 days at usual rates.

You cannot replace the pipelines with ships at LNG ports - there isnt capacity within the EU and it takes years to build a deep sea LNG facility.

Given that Bulgaria (was near enough) 100% reliant on Russia for both gas and oil, it is getting backfilled from Germany - putting more pressure on its reserves.

LNG isnt just used for heating and power. Its one of the major components used by the chemical industry. by sector: 44% domestic & heating, 28% industrial, the rest power (thats for Germany).

Cutting off gas means no chemical product from the likes of Bosch. The German emergency plans calls for a complete sutdown of industrial to extend reserves for domestic and civil uses. I dont think it factored in supporting the rest of the EU on its reserves.

Ex IT chief at Homeland Security watchdog stole US govt software to pirate

Just deserts

Looks like one revolving door slapped someone in the face

Where are the (serious) Russian cyberattacks?

The SATCOM network was taken down (mostly in Ukraine and Germany).

Damage trashed the transceivers - not just a patch or reboot.

They are used for wind turbines maintaince in germany - 500+ down.

Europe's largest nuclear plant on fire after Russian attack

Re: Not fake news but…….

How, would you go about that, for the sake of nora if there is ANYONE defending it?

You cant just snip the wires going into it - remember Fucoshima?

you have to take it and shut it down properly. Thats what they did. They had to break a training room, apparently.

It appears they did it at night - so used some flares.

Time to get over the righteous indignation - there are 14 other reactors in Ukraine.....

Re: "illegal, illogical, and inexplicable"

Unfortunately, NATO (wheter it is or isnt as such by us is moot) is seen as an existential threat by Russia.

Ukraine asks ICANN to delete all Russian domains

Re: Block the internet?

Namecheap doesn't seem have the infrastructure to promptly take down known phishing watering hole sites in a reasonable time - it probably cant take down its RU domains either..

US imposes sanctions as Russia invades Ukraine

Re: re. It spent the last 400 years part of russia

Oh please.....

That is nonsense - It doesnt mention the fact that the Mongols flattend all of russia and Poland (and anywhere else they felt like).

Kiev was sacked & burned many times -

It was first destroyed in 1150ish by the poles/lithuanians

The main Monghul army and then The golden horde (a splinter of the mongol empire) had Kiev as a stop off on their jaunts for almost 250 years. It was grassland for most of that time. There simply was no russia or ukraine (or poland, lithuania Iran Iraq or anywhere else east of the Danube)

Then Kiev was (almost) totally destroyed repeatedly - the 1240 sack left <3000 people in the city.

The city of Kiev wasnt ukraine at that time anyway and the territory was shared with the poles and the pechenegs - it was a single city state and not a country and not the point.

Ukraine only first existed as a country in 1991. In its older history it was a provence. A big one, granted, but a provence. If you are Ukrainian, you will know that the name means 'Parcel of land' or 'borderland' in old slav- lterally.

no, I am not Ukrainian, but have studied Black Sea culture for some time and travelled round the Western shore a bit

Funfact 1 - the name Rus originates from viking traders on the russian rivers for the slave trade to the East. Dang all to do with ukranian (slavs) and pechenegs who were mostly the victims of the trade. The original Rus were based around Novagrod in the North....

The state you refer to lenin stomping on was a splinter of the Bolshevik revolution that really lasted only for 4 years, and was acknowledged by no one. It was called 'ukrainian soviet socialist republic' and only existed because Germany tried to secure grain supplies in WW1 and cut the northern half of russia out of the deal (russia having had its arse handed to it earlier).... it lasted from December 1917-May 1922 as an arm of the Russian Soviet - indeed it sent representatives to the russian Soviet at the time - as every provence did...

Fun fact 2 : Over 1/3rd of the west of the country was annexed from Poland (by russia) and given to ukraine in 1938 with a second chunk from Czechoslovakia in 1946

- do they want it back? who would the 'they' actually be? Ukraine/Poland/Slovakia/Czech - or the russians who took it in the first place?

Re: Freezing Russian assets is the way to stop Putin

oh but he can.

All of Europe NEEDS russian gas. It would cost hundreds of thousands of lives if he stopped it.

The Europe isnt going to impose real sanctions - and shouldnt - its not our business

JFJ

I meant stay out of Ukraine - we got them into this mess. It spent the last 400 years part of russia and was only really recreated again under Kruschev - only then because he was Ukranian.

Let the Russians have the headache and we should stay out.

hold on - we are talking Ukraine and Russia - umm Ukrainian banking is massively more corrupt that Rusian...

We really should stay out of it - but we cant.

We need Ukranian titanium, corn, wheat and their women (the same as Germany in 1919 and 1940)

We need Russian gas (and we really do) for basically all European production. Gas was the green hope when we dismantled most of the Coal plants & Germany dismantled its Nuclear.

While a big song and dance has been made about germany and Nordstream II, we havent heard much about the EU willingly turning off or refusing Nordstream I - or the other pipelines and LNG supplied.

a full 40% of ALL the EUs energy comes from natural gas from Russia.

At the end of the day - what are we gonna do?

Sit quiet and take a whuppin is what.

A pox on both their houses.

UK.gov threatens to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

Re: Dead Cat

They couldnt block VPN.

Using a VPN is advice issued by the state for protecting yourself , is used by Civil services, and many of us now working from home.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/device-security-guidance/infrastructure/virtual-private-networks

Raspberry Pis gain power to flash their own OSes with new network install function

Re: Only useful

True Dat

Been looking for one for some dev work since December. Damned if I can find any (4 or 8 gb) at a reasonable price.

Ebay is the only source, and I have been ESD Burned there before - and the price is now more than double retail.

Jeff Bezos adds some more overheads to his $485m yacht by taking down historic bridge

Re: So they made a humongous yacht

They knew - its been done before elsewhere. The city has grown round the shipyard.

Re: Can't they remove the masts, simply?

They likely can - but - the cost of dismantling the bridge and rebuilding it is likely less.

This shipyard has mega yachts before - it built the black pearl back in 2010(ish) which has 70 mtr tall masts).

Likely in this case, it wont even have its masts on at this stage - the hull is to be moved and it sits on a barge. The total height of the hull (including draft) and the barge itsself is likely >40M (max height of the bridge)

The masts for Black Pearl, incidentally, were made in Portsmouth.

Black pearl made it past with something like 4M clearance - that is one deck or so difference....

There are 3 other super sailing yachts >100m in existence and more motor variety - many from this yard. Most of them are owned by Russian Olligarchs

US-China chip cold war? It's only helping the Middle Kingdom, silicon makers warn

Re: Sanctions

That is laudable, but unfortunately would only work if it was reciprocal. Its not.

North Korea says it's launched a third hypersonic missile, this time reaching Mach 10

Re: How do you visualise Mach 10?

Lifting body VTOL - simples

https://www.thunderbirds.com/vehicles/thunderbird-2

Meta Platforms demands staffers provide proof of COVID-19 booster vaccine before returning to office

Re: Good.

I am familiar with reading medical journals, and I havent been able to find any medical papers to support this for Omicron. That might have been true for the original infection - nothing I have seen refers to the latest (or even Delta for that matter).

The story is more about boosting, than basic vaccination. There appears to be less actual information on that.

I would be happy to stand corrected, but a link to the Guardian wont cut it.

Perseverance on the rocks: Pebbles clog up the rover's Martian sample collection

These issues

Make it obvious that humans still have a part to play in exploration.

A jam, probably clearable with a tap from a persuader would do the trick...

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/725557961/dwarven-hammer?gpla=1&gao=1

Yule goat's five-year flame-free streak ends ignominiously

Re: Ah Thatcher

to be fair, the UK was totally screwed when she came to power. It was on a downward trajectory from 1951 when its bets on Persian Oil failed (it was making 3 times the income from the persian oilfields than Iran was at the time!) - not to mention war-debt accrued to the US. Then Suez, and the world saw it was neither an honest broker, nor a Great Power.

Finding North Sea oil saved the UK for a few years (discovered in '69, with proper exploitation starting in '76).

It was the North Sea finds which funded the UK through the worst of its reforms.

TBH, the tories then couldn't finance (and would be ideologically opposed to) creating a sovereign wealth fund like Norway.

The victory in the Falklands was the final thing that enabled her to keep winning general elections.

Re: Yup, she really was brains of Britain wasnt she

I had a Maestro.

With its single stromberg carb, it could barely pull its self up hill.

I also had a Triumph (years later) which was built in the late 60's - a real car, once the rust was replaced..... Though mechanically - absolutely great....

Max Schrems hits Irish Data Protection Commissioner with corruption complaint

Re: Faecesbook

My understanding of this is that a processor may not deny a service for a natural person on the basis of that person not providing consent to process data for a different purpose.

Consent is not required for all processing - its just one of the basis for processing information. Each use of data needs to be assessed - thats why a user may consent to data being processed for the purpose of providing a service - such as facebag functions - while not providing consent for the same data to be used for the advertising targetting.

In the '80s, spaceflight sim Elite was nothing short of magic. The annotated source code shows how it was done

I had to format my HD to stop playing that game. I knew I had a problem when I moved jobs so I could nip home for lunch to set up orders and move cargo.

There was nothing like being in a battle with 700-1200 players in fleet - Never progressed to the Titans - BS & Logistics here mostly -(with some scout work)...

CEI/Eve Razor/Northern Coalition.

That game is digital Crack

Northrop Grumman throws hat in the ring to design NASA's next-gen Lunar Terrain Vehicle

Re: Careful Drivers?

That was pretty much my first car experience too......

Swiss lab's rooftop demo shows sunlight and air can make fuel

Re: Er, ok

Given that you likely refill you car only once or twice per month - you estimates are off.

I don't disagree with you in the fundamental questions, though.

I dont think we should consider any replacement tech as a one shot fix. It is likely that a basket of many solutions would need to be considered? so - PV/Wind/Tidal/biomass/this and Nuclear should be taken together in a basket. Economics will ultimately lead to one winning.

Reminds me, I must go see Dune.

I was impressed with the effects, but disappointed in the story for 2 reasons.

1 - It dropped almost all of the cultural parts of the Fremen - making them more like some desert waifs, rather than a Bene Gesserit honed ethnic Zanussi culture( based upon the Libyan Senussi resistance movement of the 1920's).

2 - it did not have much/anything about Pauls struggles to avoid the Golden Path/Jihad as his prescience began to form....

I watched the (gawd awful) Lynch version the next day - and a blend of the two approaches would have been better in those areas, I think.

140,000-plus drivers sent $60m in compensation checks after Amazon 'stole their tips'

Would there be cause for a civil case against amazon for this - by a customer who tipped?

This was theft, plain and simple.

Amazon just had to repay the difference - they should have had some pain applied. Being a corp, are punitive damages appropriate? No chance the acting CEO of the time could serve time, I suppose...

If Amazon is doing this to its employees, immagine how hard its shafting its suppliers and the little bit players in its marketplace?

Cisco requires COVID-19 shots for all US staff – even remote workers

Re: Get rid of the religious exemption.

Asprin has been made from salicylic acid since 1897 - it was not tested on anything but the inventor back then.

It was the 'wonderdrug' of the Spanish Flu - where it became a household product (fully synthetic then)

Also, on that list is Prep H - its been around since 1935 (interesting story)...... It might have been tested later - but that is 'after the fact' - it had been in general use a lot longer.

The list is incorrect.

Real-time crowdsourced fact checking not really that effective, study says

true - if we believed in the crowds, we would still have bear baiting and the coliseum in regular use. I am sure both were popular - both were barbaric.

Ancient with a dash of modern: We joined the Royal Navy to find there's little new in naval navigation

The RYA Yachtmaster (Ocean) still includes sextant use

I think that the coastal yachtmaster just needs 'awareness off' - while the ocean requires use and care of a sextant.

It is trickey, but doable, if you have the tables and a list of the steps to hand.

The beauty of the sextant navigation, along with Line, and compass chart and a 2B pencil is that they will get you anywhere

I liked the image of the Portland speed gauge- it brought me back. We teach how to use that with the Sea Cadets still.

Forget everything you learned playing Lunar Lander: Chinese boffins reveal secrets of Chang'e 5 probe's touchdown

Re: Extra Sensors

you can have redundant sensors on Boeings - its an optional extra!

On Airbus, you get them, but if they disagree, the computer reboots.

Electric car makers ready to jump into battery recycling amid stuttering supply chains

Re: The pros and cons with the carmaker recycling the batteries

exactly - however, if the manufacturer of the car is also the recylcer of the battery then the incentive is to recycle the lot as you sell/lease another car.

That way the environmental damage is significantly worse.

The pros and cons with the carmaker recycling the batteries

There are a some of 'pros and cons with car makers getting into battery recycling...

Battery tech is in a state of flux - even the basic chemistry isn't finalised.

There will be significant investment required in battery recycling - and yes different models from different vendors will have different ways to do it.... The R&D expense will be spread accross the vendors - making it less efficient.

This means that there is little incentive for manufacturers to standardise across the industry in recycling (if Elon gets Elons batteries, and GM get theirs)

There becomes no incentive to make batteries last longer.

Why bother have batteries last > 4 years if first owner sells on after the initial lease/buy.

Lockin might break the 2nd hand market - a perfectly good car might be recycled because to force the market sooner - but because the manufacturer wants the lithium. Manufactures can 'encourage' return of the vehicle by shortening the useful life of the hull and other parts. Recycling is not as efficient for the environment as reusing the veichle.

On the other hand,

it will be more convenient for the 'owner' or leaser - hand the keys to the dealership.

Leasing, rather than ownership might reduce the cost - not at the cost of profit for the manufacturer.

It might be better (for the customer) if the battery recycling is controlled further down the supply chain - mining companies perhaps?

Just thinking

Brit MPs blast Baroness Dido Harding's performance as head of NHS Test and Trace

give me enough monkeys and enough type writers.....

We're all at sea: Navigation Royal Navy style – with plenty of IT but no GPS

Re: Obsolete Paper Charts

Interesting that they mix just about every measurement unit in the document

See para re Lord Howe Island (and wolf rock)

Nautical Miles

Cables

Meters

Yards

Re: Squat

sorta a negative squat, then....

Re: Welcome to the 21sa Century

Thumbs up and good luck on your yachtmaster!

I built an AIS Reciever/GPS/Chartplotter on a Rasberry Pi for very little money. Beats the crappy 5inch screens we used to have. I did many passages with just my phone for years earlier (and nothing but dead reckoning before that)

For leisure sailing, I still keep paper charts. The plotter is fine an all - and I use it -as well- but its always good to reference a paper chart. It feels right - and marking it up is a great record of previous trips.

Navigating without GPS is one thing – so let's jam it and see what happens to our warship

Re: Outside the cocked hat

I regularly use the cocked hat method for transits offshore. Its as quick as transferring a gps coord. Of course I do have paper charts too....

Punchy Biden-lookalike grandad goes viral for fighting boxing gadget

Well, thanks, El Reg

I followed a link to ticktok and lost half an hour.

Is that what the kids go for these days?

Truly awful.... I might have to bleach my eyes

Boffins say Martian colonists could pee in buckets, give blood if they want shelter

Re: Crap science and crap science journalism

Human waste has been used for centuries in many cultures - but does pose a number of potential risks. It has to be thoroughly disinfected before use - human waste is a source of many, many parasite infestations.

Assuming processing involved complete dehydration or UV treatments, it might be OK.

McDonald's email blunder broadcasts database creds to comedy competition winners

I read all the comments - and am surprised

Missed the crux of the story

'enjoys munching McDonald's meaty produce'

I demand a correction.

'enjoys gagging on McDonald's grease and salt produce'