Posts by gryphon

Airbus keeps an A350 flying for 24 hours

Re: Noise cancelling headphones

Fifth Element FTW

Oracle faces $100M annual bill to back Wisconsin datacenter power promises

Re: Bla bla

Agreed.

Especially the 'creating thousands of jobs' bit.

Even a 1GW datacentre campus is unlikely to have more than a couple of hundred permanent employees.

Although I imagine some will be quite well paid, given they'll be skilled trades like HVAC engineers, electrical engineers and so on.

Less so for security, FM and the guys that cycle round swapping out hard drives.

UK's seventh prime minister in a decade says he'll ditch digital ID scheme

"Thank christ that soviet-era tracking enthusiast is gone, but lets hope the replacement doesn't just try to sneak digital ID in by another name."

Unfortunately that is always what happens.

It'll be something like YourGov, National Entitlement Card (see Scotland, get 'em young when they don't know to refuse), Easy Access or that ilk.

Tech support chap told angry customer to think inside the box – and solved the problem

Re: Read things myself? Never!

May have told this story before.

Worked for a company that had contract to provide laptops, printers etc. to Scottish Court Service.

Had a call to go see the Sheriff Principal for Lothian (big boss basically and a very, very smart guy according to another Sheriff I knew) because his inkjet printer wasn't working.

Turns out he hadn't removed the sticky tab from the cartridge print head when he'd replace it. He had the good grace to go "D'oh" more or less when I pointed it out to him though.

Think his secretary might have noticed but didn't want to point it out to him. :-)

Re: "when many phones still had removable batteries"

Similar.

London portion of the company moved into a lovely new office near St. Paul's.

Problem was that every window was covered in that gold heat reflective film to stop sun and heat coming because simple blinds are so passe.

Unfortunately it made the office into a faraday cage so nobody's mobiles worked.

Had to end up getting Vodafone to fit a femto / pico cell site in the office.

Some of the staff's normal bills were in the hundreds of pounds a month range. They all had desk phones at vast expense but never used them.

Re: "when many phones still had removable batteries"

Still got mine sitting in a drawer with PSU attached.

Must plug it in and see if it still works.

As others have noted it'll probably still have a charge anyway even if not used for 15 years.

How to teach an old Intel Mac new tricks with OpenCore Legacy Patcher

I'd like to do this on a couple of Mac Pro's, circa 2009 and 2012 I have sitting in a cupboard just to see what happens.

Plus the 2012 one has 2 x 4 core Xeon's and 64GB of RAM.

But I believe I'd be stymied by needing a 'Metal' compatible graphics card for the newer OS's?

Took a look at that and what a rabbit warren. :-(

Australia demands AI companies must produce more energy than they consume, stop ‘theft’ of content

Re: First the social media ban and now this...

Perhaps it's a case of "You've given me your money, I've changed the deal, pray I don't change it further".

Photovoltaics are still running after a year under Swiss trains

Problem is it's quite a big CAPEX with payback over 5-7 years.

£2500-£4500 per parking space

Plus no guarantee you'll be able to sell excess power to the grid (apparently a lot of DNO's are constraining feed-in due to infrastructure issues) so would either need to curtail it when required or make a massive investment in battery storage as well.

Microsoft intros tech that rebuilds dead PCs without requiring local copies of Windows

Mac FTW?

Haven't Mac's had this capability for a long while?

Found it, introduced in OS X 10.7 Lion in 2011.

I know you're usually behind the curve MS but seriously....

Europe's new import rules are coming for your bargains

Re: Hopefully this excludes collectibles.

Agreed.

To paraphrase Douglas Adams.

You've got to be careful who you vote for in case the wrong lizard gets in.

David Potter, the man who put Psion in the palm of your hand, logs off at 82

Agreed.

I stupidly gave mine to a friend many years ago.

Still have my old 3a but it has a bit of a hinge problem and needs the display ribbon cable replaced.

Showed it to my 18 year old son when I dug it out when moving house.

He couldn't believe anything so small from 'back in the day' was a full computer.

End of era as the BBC switches off Radio 4 Long Wave service

Re: They have been threatening to close FM for ages.

I have a small FM radio that I have on when shaving / in the shower, say half an hour a day.

2x AA batteries last several months even with a small LCD display with clock / frequency.

Blockbuster new Raspberry Pi project turns any screen into old-school VCR

Re: Old school VCR

That brought back a memory.

When my parents divorced and we moved with my mother, for a while until she got back on her feet, we had a coin operated TV.

i.e. You'd have to feed, presumably 10p's or 50p's back then, and it would let you switch the thing on for a period.

I'm presuming because she didn't really have any credit history in her own name at that point so it was all she could get.

Couple of years later though we definitely had a VCR with the old-style piano keys so things must have improved.

Anyone else remember when Channel 4 launched and they would have breaks in the middle of programs where advertising would go but no actual adverts?

NHS prescribes half a million Copilot licenses for its paperwork headache

Re: In one ear...

Well they pinky promise not to use Copilot Business for training the LLM models and that Copilot data will now be processed within the UK.

Which is obviously enough for whoever signs off on data leakage risks for the NHS.

Tony Blair and the Reform party both want AI in government, though they can't agree on what for

Re: He sees good use for AI...

His son has an AI related startup if memory serves

Gothenburg's self-driving bus trammed on day one

Re: Self-Steering Bicycle

Melbourne's hook turns are 'interesting' to say the least for the inexperienced.

UK nuclear investors get 'high' returns for lower risk than consumers, who also foot the bill

Nice of the NAO to wake up to this. /s

Private Eye have been all over this for a decade pointing out this disparity in risk and the pricing model.

I've never understood why nuclear is so expensive, is it the actual building requirements or the regulations?

As I understand it 90% of a nuclear tea kettle power station is the same as any gas-fired or coal-fired power station.

Fuel X is used to heat water which turns into steam which drives turbines to produce electricity.

Repeat.

Microsoft says cu l8r to text message security

Re: Will still be needed

But how many will bother to take advantage of that.

I have to use MS Authenticator extensively for work.

It's bad enough I have to have it, I'm not having a synced copy on my other phone as well, if it even supports that.

Americans would rather have a nuclear plant in their backyard than a datacenter

Re: Well...

Still the same issue of water usage.

Doubled really since most nuclear also needs massive amounts of water I believe.

Plus heating up the local environment due to cooling the servers.

London’s BT Tower to get rooftop swimming pool

Re: Considering

But presumably that would be on lower floors, if you are removing that weight and adding it at the top then it's naturally going to be top-heavy.

Also, is it constructed from concrete or steel?

My understanding is that concrete works very well in compression, i.e. weighing it down, but less so in expansion, so if you remove the weight it can 'spring' a bit and crack.

We've only gone and done it: Changed what you're used to

No thanks

Really don’t like the new layout.

On iOS Safari.

Top section is far too large.

Big gap between page banner and top of that section.

Next section layout newspaper style is awful.

And the blurb and photo on Rupert Goodwins Columnist is taking up 2/3rds of the page for no good reason I can see.

All in all, yuck. Go back and think again.

Sticky-note security turned gym into hall of '80s horrors

Re: Gyms

AKA Raleigh Grifter

US state laws push age checks into the operating system

Re: Payment methods

I tried that on something, I forget what and it somehow worked out it was an expiring virtual card and it told me to think again.

50 GW of datacenter demand queues up for UK grid access

"developers try to reserve power for projects that may never be built"

As Lee D said.

At the very least lodge a bond to cover 5-10 years of their estimated power consumption so if they end up ditching the project the power companies (or more likely the taxpayer aren't on the hook for it), a bit like landfill or mining restoration bonds to allow reverting sites to nature which avoids the companies pinky promise to do but then going mysteriously bankrupt at the last minute.

No doubt the developers can insure or hedge themselves for it.

Worried Europeans can now cut Azure's phone cord completely

I suppose in theory it allows those who are experienced in running Azure with scripting and so on and so forth to apply that to on-prem without re-inventing the wheel.

But the kind of people who want this presumably already have all the experience built up of doing this on-prem anyway. Possibly in a clunkier way, but with the added benefit they can pick their own hardware and don't have to choose it from an MS approved list.

DVSA drives up online theory test contract value to £700M with no explanation

Driving instructors were allowed to block book.

UK tech hit by double trouble: Fewer foreign techies amid skills squeeze

Re: UK is Missing a Huge Opportunity

I think a lot of European universities have rubbed their hands in glee and offered scientists who's project budget funding has been cut in US massive bonuses and help to immigrate with the respective govts. falling over themselves to help the process along.

Not sure where the UK is on the scale though, think I remember seeing that Italy was making a lot of the running in that respect.

Poland bans camera-packing cars made in China from military bases

UK Unofficial

Can't find official MOD guidance but seems that this is active already at certain sites in the UK.

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/366599/chinese-evs-banned-uk-military-sites-over-spying-concerns

Dutch cops arrest man after sending him confidential files by mistake

I believe parts of the OSA 1989 are still effective

BOFH: Eight pints of a lager and a management breakthrough

Re: Ah yes, 6-Sigma.

MS5750 was always explained to me as you can get away with anything as long as it follows a documented process.

If that process says the box must be dropped 5 times between end of production and being loaded onto the delivery lorry that's completely fine as long as it is always 5 times exactly.

UK digital ID goes in-house, government swears it isn't an ID card

Re: National Insurance Numbers

No physical card these days, just a letter.

My kids were quite amused when I showed them mine,

Marketing 'genius' destroyed a printer by trying to fix a paper jam

Re: "Xerox bought the tech from someone else"

Sometimes kit just knows its going to be superseded or replaced and suddenly starts working correctly or behaving.

It's quite uncanny.

UK backtracks on digital ID requirement for right to work

Scottish National Entitlement card has a lot of this actually.

Don't know about back-end databases but there must be some checking functionality built in since my kids can use it as a bus pass.

Think some councils also use it as a library card for kids and OAPs

Trump spectrum sale leaves airlines with $4.5B bill for altimeter do-over

As I've noted previously just wait until somebody in White House notices how many Class A IPv4 ranges the DoD owns and tells them to start using 10.x.x.x so they can sell those off for billions.

And it would be billions given their current market price.

BOFH: All through the house, not a creature was stirring except the homicidal vacuum cleaner

I guess they’ve improved it then. I stayed there many years ago because it was just across the road from the Commvault offices for training.

Small and cramped room with a bathroom that was black, on black, on black with weak lights. Thought I was in Hotblack Desiato’s ship almost to carry on the Mostly Harmless theme.

There was barely enough light to shave.

Glad the company was paying but whatever they paid it wasn’t worth it.

Trump Media jumps aboard the speculative nuclear fusion bandwagon

Re: How long before a juicy government contract drops?

Until we have matter replicators a la Star Trek we'll always need fossil fuels.

Vast majority of crude oil is obviously burnt but rest goes for agriculture, pharmaceuticals etc.

Reducing the cost of that feed stock since the proportion of it available will rise as transport proportion falls might have positive benefits.

UK.gov accused of Grinching Christmas by ignoring phone theft scourge

Re: Someone, somewhere lied to us

iPhone 17 Pro Max - incl. local tax

Australia - AU$ 2199

UK - £1200

More or less the same once you take GST / VAT into account.

Proxmox delivers its software-defined datacenter contender and VMware escape hatch

I hope Mr Khalilifar's company is contributing to the development costs if he's making a good living providing Proxmox products or is he just a sponger like so many large companies who are entirely dependent on Linux or particular libraries but take the money and run so to speak.

Apply here to win a Microsoft Ugly Sweater. It's uglier than ever

Windows for Workgroups

Mainly for 'easy' printer and file sharing and then having to back up only one machine without the expense of a proper Netware server.

Defra admits Windows 10 refresh letter to MPs was wrong – machines were already on Windows 11

I presume with all the different areas that are covered by the various sub-organisations within Defra that there are dozens of apps just for interacting with farmers let alone the water companies, food safety etc.

If they are all browser based then of course the client should really be able to be anything but it can't be taken as read.

Windows keeps obsolete strings forever to avoid breaking translations

Re: Oh FFS -

Presumably you made sure that a 20 character string in English that became a 50 character string in German (gotta love those compound words) didn't break your apps?

UK digital ID plan gets a price tag at last – £1.8B

Re: "not everyone has a passport or wants a passport."

Weren't they all supposed to have been hoovered up with a free 'I have the right to vote' card when they introduced voter ID?

Re: Our is different...

We all saw how well that worked with the IR35 query system where HMRC consistently gave the wrong advice.

I've met Murray briefly.

Actually seemed a reasonable, pretty switched on guy.

My father knew him a lot better and liked him, he normally hated all politicians, especially Labour and the SNP.

Of course as a minister he has to hold his nose and the govt. line at the same time but that's the price you pay if you want to sit at the big table on the extra ministerial salary.

I think most MP's have their hypocrisy detectors and embarrassment factor invisibly removed the moment they walk through the doors of parliament, or maybe it happens when they put the papers in to stand for election.

Russia-linked crooks bought a bank for Christmas to launder cyber loot

Re: They'll be buying

I think you need to remove the 'next' and change the tense.

China recruiting spies in the UK with fake headhunters and ‘sites like LinkedIn’

Sharing your clearance, specific projects for clients etc. even if you only have SC is a definite no-no. Even worse if holding DV.

Annual security training will always say that as well.

"Since I hold DV I am working extensively with 'XYZ' on implementing 'ABC version X' - Not fine

"Recently completed a rollout of 'Product X' for Govt. dept Y" - Not fine

"I have implemented 'X' across a wide range of clients including detailed architecture and design etc. etc. - Fine (As long as it's a common product)

Obviously bad actors could put 2 and 2 together if you work for the usual suspects and say you are heavily involved in M365 or security software but shouldn't be presented on a plate.

Outdated Samsung handset linked to fatal emergency call failure in Australia

I believe many US rural fire services operate a subscription only model and will only fight a fire from a non-subscriber as far as it might impact a subscribing property.

Likewise if a county fire service turns out to a call but determines the property is just over the county line and there is no-mutual aid agreement they might just let it burn

US taxpayers being kept in the dark over datacenter subsidies

I forgot the '/s'

I think if if was an American state taxpayer I'd be asking them to give a subsidy for datacentres not to be built in my state.

Brings very few permanent jobs, massive building disruption, uses crazy amounts of water and drives up the price of electricity in the region.

No doubt the states and communities get some form of land use tax but very unlikely to make up for the subsidy in the short-medium term.