Posts by Phil O'Sophical

Cosmic rays more likely to glitch out water-cooled computers

Re: Simon says

Would you like ice and a slice of lemon with that?

Sun had a problem with stray particles like that back around the year 2000. IIRC the L2 cache on one processor model didn't have ECC, and was prone to occasional bit flips.

The UK's bad encryption law can't withstand global contempt

Re: One rule for them, another for the rest of us.

Interesting how the losers always find excuses which boil down to "it wasn't our fault, we are still right".

Re: One rule for them, another for the rest of us.

Which applies to most right wing establishments and beliefs.

It applies to most extremist establishments & beliefs, right and left.

China debuts bonkers hybrid electric trolley-truck

Re: Small Battery

1.) The Pantograph would be automatically steered and look more like a long whip for cars.

A bit like dodgems at a funfair? Still doesn't solve the return problem.

Re: Total Economic Cost

Electrifying rail is relatively straightforward, one overhead catenary which a pantograph bar can contact anywhere across its width, and a return via the rails. Catenaries can cross easily at junctions because they're all carrying the same voltage and polarity.

Doesn't work so well for road vehicles with rubber tyres on asphalt. There you need paired overhead wires, and a way to ensure that the corresponding 2-pole pantograph connects correctly, and can disconnect/reconnect when changing lanes, crossing junctions etc. You really don't want a lorry to come to a halt in the middle of the traffic because the pantograph came unhitched. If you remember trolleybuses you'll remember the entertainment of watching the conductor waving a long wobbly pole around trying to rehook the power collector onto the wire, while the traffic clogged up behind the bus.

Cable tension is also an issue, the faster the vehicle is travelling, the more taut the wire must be. On an autobahn that means supports that can handle railway-like tension, not the relatively loose wires that can be used with city buses.

Windows 11 puts 'disgusting' Remote Mailslots protocol out of its misery

Re: Net Send was disgusting.

Never used this, but similar commands on other OSes were always fun, especially if you could embed escape sequences that triggered actions on 'smart' terminals.

Silicon Valley Bank's UK arm bought by HSBC for 1 British pound in rescue deal

According to my old English teacher, the IoM is named after the sea god Manannan, not "man" as such.

Wight, on the other hand, is an old English word for person, so arguably the Isle of Wight is actually the Isle of man!

UK Prime Minister wants £800M to spend on big British iron

Re: shall participate

I suggest that you read the relevant parts of the TCA.

Re: shall participate

No time frame was set, nothing about when. Just a fact.

The clock started ticking once the TCA was ratified, the UK is now waiting for the EU to honour it.

I hope Britain will join but a lot regarding the money has to be settled first too.

That was settled in the TCA, I suggest you read it. The UK has been setting aside the required amount since the TCA was ratified.

Some more trust seem to have been added lately and that of course is a good thing.

So they say.

PS. Do you feel Britain has to and is forced to join too, due to the "shall".

?? It was clear that the UK wanted to remain part of these programmes, and has been applying pressure to the EU to respect the agreement. That's why it agreed to have that wording in the TCA.

Article 710 of the Trade and Cooperation Agreeement (TCA) "GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR PARTICIPATION IN UNION PROGRAMMES AND ACTIVITIES":

The United Kingdom shall participate in and contribute to the Union programmes, activities, or in exceptional cases, the part of Union programmes or activities, which are open to its participation, and which shall be listed in a Protocol on Programmes and activities in which the United Kingdom participates ("Protocol I").

Note shall participate. Not "might" or "could" or "if it wants', but shall, unequivocal.

The "Protocol I" referred to defines the programmes as: Horizon Europe; the Euratom Research and Training programme; the ITER fusion test facility; and the Copernicus earth monitoring system.

The only condition applied was that the TCA must be ratified by both parties, which has happened. It was signed on 30th December 2020, and entered into force on May 1st, 2021.

The remaining steps were the various committes to decide work, budgets, etc. That is where the EU is dragging its feet, threatening not to work on those until the NI Protocol issue is resolved, despite there being no justification for that under the TCA.

That is exactly what was agreed in the Brexit withdrawal agreement. The only thing stopping it is the EU refusal to honour that part of the agreement until the disagreement over the wholly-unrelated NI protocol is resolved.

That might now finally happen.

BOFH: I care a lot ... about onion bhajis

Re: Famous

That's because they are justifiably "famous", and not "celebrities".

NASA fixes solar observation spacecraft by turning it off and turning it on again

Re: Recover from latch-up

Wots noise?

It's what you hear every time a sales droid opens their mouth. An unwanted signal that contains no information.

Intruder alert: WH Smith hit by another cyber attack

Re: Offers

Are they another annoyance that Smiths try to foist on you?

As if the weekend Guardian isn't enough?

Havana Syndrome definitely (maybe) not caused by brain-scrambling energy weapons

Re: symptoms are also consistent with known RF effects

Cohibas?

Outage-hit Twitter muddies violent speech policy

at what point Twitter will simply lack the skillset to fix an issue quickly.

Don't worry, it'll soon have full self-bugfixing capabilities.

PC tech turns doctor to diagnose PC's constant crashes as a case of arthritis

Re: Unfixable CRT Display

Brazil, actually.

Re: Unfixable CRT Display

There was a news story just a few weeks ago about a guy who was shot dead by his own gun, after he ignored the signs and carried his concealed weapon into the imager room.

Re: South don't work in the North

On an HD screen, the distance between pixels is so small that it's quite believable (to me) that calibration would be different between the hemispheres. It's not an issue with visible image distortion, but (as a previous poster noted) with convergence. The RGB beam guns are each placed at the vertices of a triangle in the tube neck (obviously you can't get all three in the same physical space), so each requires a very slightly different deflection parameters to hit a given spot on the tube phosphor screen. It only takes a tiny magnetic field change to move those beams the fraction of a degree that would cause them to hit different places on the screen at the edge/corner extremes of deflection. Sony Trinitrons were less sensitive because, IIRC, the three guns were inline, not in a triangle, so only deflection in one plane was tricky to manage.

I'd expect that monitors could be recalibrated for the 'other' hemisphere, but probably not in the field.

As for latitude effects, that's certainly true but most people live in a fairly narrow band around the equator. I guess that moving either typr of CRT to a polar base would require some further relalignment.

Bitcoin mining rig found stashed in school crawlspace

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Then again, we had some who would get bored on the night shift, and use lab PCs to play games, on occasion even rebooting them, despite the signs saying that they were running QA tests overnight.

Wipro tells freshers a job awaits - if they accept a lower salary than first offered

lakh

Lakh is a size multiplier, like Mega or Giga, of 10⁵, not a unit. Presumably 6.5 lakh is actually a reference to ₹6.5 x 10⁵ (i.e. 650,000 rupees)?

Amazon mandates return to office for 300,000 corporate staff

Re: No hard stares at home

s/states/stares/

&*(%$ing autocorrect :-(

Re: No hard stares at home

These days, though, hard states apparently result in a parliamentary enquiry about bullying...

Re: Creepy

Work is for work and make friends outside of workplace.

You do realise that many people meet their future life partners in work?

I have many friends made from work, some in my local office and others from remote offices met during business trips. I also, of course, have many friends met outside work. There's no hard & fast rule.

As for bonding, bonding with team mates is a very different thing, for different reasons, than bonding with friends. A group of workmates who haven't bonded at all isn't a team, it's just a collection of employees. I've bonded with teammates, we often lunched together, went for a beer together on business trips, and generally had fun. We rarely actually saw each other outside the office otherwise, nor did we really want to.

So much depends on the kind of work. Some is as easy from home as in an office, but not all.

A couple of years ago, as lockdown was winding down, I was house-hunting. Some estate agents had locked offices, everything was done from home via video tours. Others had open offices (with sensible mask/separation rules) and would arrange actual visits where possible. Guess which ones I used, and bought a house from?

Time will tell, the companies who pick the wrong option for their situation will lose staff/money & disappear.

Re: Cat ... bag ...

You know, students, poorer working class...

Bus pass, student card, blue badge?

The "free" ID you can get requires Internet access and a smartphone, so you cannot do it at a library. If you can't afford a smartphone then you've been disenfranchised.

Absolute nonsense, always peddled by Labour voters who can't understand why they rarely win elections, and prefer to blame someone else rather than accept that its Labour policies which fail.

If you need help with getting ID, just call the office of the candidate you want to vote for (or any candidate, for that matter), they'll fall over themselves to ensure that you have what you need to vote. It's their job, after all.

What Mary, Queen of Scots, can teach today’s cybersec royalty

Re: Rarely observed.

The cat won't care, there will always be a backup human to provide the required food and attention.

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

Re: Burger slinger?

As I have never been anywhere near a “whitey”, what is a slider?

When I was little, a slider was a slab of ice cream between two wafers.

The second dust bowl cometh for America, supercomputer warns

Where does the model suggest that the rain will go? Are there deserts that are going to bloom into farms and vineyards? I know it's fashionable these days for journalists to only report bad news, but it would be interesting, possibly even useful, to know if there are any positive results from such changes.

Tesla fires gigafactory staff after someone made the mistake of mentioning unions

contacting Tesla

couldn't reach anyone at the company for comment, as Tesla has no media team and its PR mailbox is full.

Have you tried Twitter?

Tesla's self-driving code may ignore stop signs, act unsafe. Patch coming ... soon

Re: This comes as standard on every Audi for years

It used to be standard on BMWs, until the wetware got fed up with the complaints and migrated to Audis. Good luck with recalling that!

Biden: I want standard EV chargers made in America by 2024 – get on it

Re: Of course chargers must be standard

Or needing a different app to start and pay with every supplier?

99 year old man says cryptocurrency is for idiots

Re: Pay REAL close attention, now...

No, they make their money by taxing the money they allow us to make. As long as we don't make enough to challenge their cartel.

UK prepares to go it alone on post-Brexit science plan

Re: “My Lifetime as a Lettuce”. The memoirs of Liz Truss

I think you'll find that the EU have implemented their side of the deal.

No, it has not. The EU is still "finalizing the UK's participation". The ball is entirely in the EU court, they are dragging their heels until the UK agrees to do what the EU wants in a completely separate area.

Re: “My Lifetime as a Lettuce”. The memoirs of Liz Truss

Even now, they still can’t admit that this is all caused by Brexit.

That's a rather bizarre statement, since all sides are in complete agreement that this situation only exists because of Brexit, and the refusal of the EU to implement the withdrawal agreement it signed up to 18 months ago.

Not quite

has failed to negotiate an ongoing association with the Horizon programme

is not an entirely accurate statement of the position. Continuing UK access to Horizon was an accepted part of the withdrawal agreement signed by UK and EU 18 months ago, and the UK has £2bn+ per year set aside for it. The problem is that the EU is refusing to respect the agreement until completely unrelated issues like the NI protocol are settled, essentially trying to blackmail the UK into accepting its terms. For now the UK is guaranteeing research grants that would be paid out of Horizon funds.

Neither UK scientists nor government want the UK to leave Horizon and look for other partners, and it's hard to believe that EU scientists would want that either, but unless EU politicians accept the agreement they signed and stop acting in bad faith there may not be any other option. No surprise that the government's trying to put a positive spin on it, of course, they won't want the EU to think that it can extort further changes to the NI protocol. That is a wholly separate issue, and should remain so.

What's up with IT, Doc? Rabbit hole reveals cause of outage

Re: Ouch

Probably keeps the neighbours away as well!

UK PM splits govt department in 4, creates dedicated 'Science and Tech' bit

Re: @Phil O'Sophical

Nope, just experienced.

Re: Davos

And I'm sure that if Labour get elected, they'll not forget their paymasters in the unions.

Re: the British people

The British people never get to choose the Prime Minister. They choose MPs, but there's no requirement for the PM to be a member of the house of commons.

Intel wants another €3.2b from German gov for Magdeburg mega fab

In 2022, Intel "generated $15.4 billion in cash from operations and paid dividends of $6.0 billion", and now they want EU taxpayers to cough up half that dividend payout to help them build a factory?

I do hope Magdeburg replies "hemispheres" to that.

Prepare to be shocked: Employees hate this One Weird Clause

Re: Skip filing patents

I've worked for a couple of US IT companies, both had pretty good policies for patents, and I did make some money from them, even those which never actually made it to issued patent status.

Re: Mental

Just shove some pencils up your nose, and put your underpants on your head.

Wind, solar power outstrip fossil fuel generation for EU

Re: I'm all right Jack...

My Mum-in-law has an old brick end terrace, no cavity walls. She has good loft insulation, but can't add external wall insulation (conservation area). Adding internal dry lining would shrink the already small rooms even further, it's also a minefield because if it isn't done properly it can create huge problems with damp.

Sometimes you can only do your best, and live with it.

Re: Hmm

This is the same National Grid that's telling us they'll have no problems producing enough power to charge EVs when they've replaced all the ICE vehicles?

Re: I'm all right Jack...

Governments capping prices sounds very nice, but if it still costs more to generate the energy the difference must be financed somehow. Most likely taxes, or borrowing where the interest is paid from taxes.

Either way we pay for the energy, directly or through tax.

Look at the current idiocy in the UK, where the radio never stops telling us how every household is entitled to government handouts, while that same government is inflicting the highest taxes in 70 years on us.

FOSS could be an unintended victim of EU crusade to make software more secure

Re: rubber stamp

This is sophistry.

Not at all, nothing I posted was false or deceptive.

Do you deny that Liz Truss was sacked by the parliamentary Conservative party?

Now that is sophistry. The parliamentarty party cannot sack the PM, only the King has that authority. At most the party can make the PM's position untenable, so that (s)he decides to resign (as they did to Truss and her two predecessors), but sacking simply isn't possible.

Re: rubber stamp

This is not merely theoretical; it has happened.

Not that I remember. The problem is that it's an all or nothing model, the parliament can't remove individual members, it only has the nuclear option of dismissing the whole commission, which protects the commission members. Out of 8 motions of censure, none was ever adopted by the parliament.

The closest they came was in 1999 when the notoriously corrupt commission led by Jacques Santer resigned en masse, ahead of a probable sacking. Edith Cresson was the real bad apple (she famously appointed her dentist as an HIV advisor, despite him knowing nothing of the subject), and the French refused to recall her. She still gets her EU pension.

McDonald's pulls plug on Wi-Fi, starts playing classical music to soothe yobs

Re: print car number plates on takeaway bags to discourage customers from littering

These are people willing to eat in McDo, do you think they'd be deterred by the death penalty?