Posts by Phil O'Sophical

Who wants dynamic dancing animations and code in their emails? Everyone! says Google

requires JavaScript loaded from a content delivery network, which isn't optimal in terms of security.

I would like to nominate this as "understatement of the week".

Apple's HomePod beams you up into new audio dimensions

success of the Echo – “tens of millions” were sold over Christmas,

I wonder how many are actually in use now?

You can resurrect any deleted GitHub account name. And this is why we have trust issues

And yes, if NPM or Nuget falls over, so does our build process. We're also totally dependent on a big cloud service provider for everything. No I don't think this is good, but it's not up to me.

So your build process automatically pulls in unverified and untested code, that anyone could have inserted malware into, and you're OK with that? You are, frankly, a fool.

Oh, and when some personal data escapes and the GDPR guys come around with the €20m fine I think you'll find it is up to you. Your employer will hang you out to dry.

What did we say about Tesla's self-driving tech? SpaceX Roadster skips Mars, steers to asteroids

Re: "rapid, unscheduled disassembly,"

That phrase goes back a long way before SpaceX.

Austrian privacy chief handed leash to EU's data protection beast

If non-EU companies don't respect GDPR then they are likely to face sanctions which could operate at country level. There would then be a strong incentive for the government of any such country to create local legislation to enforce GDPR rules. Might not be exactly the same penalties, and they might not go to the EU, but the end result would have to be much the same, if trade is to continue. That would be true for both brexited-UK, and other non-EU places like USA, China, Japan, etc.

Ghost in the DCL shell: OpenVMS, touted as ultra reliable, had a local root hole for 30 years

Re: When men were real men

Yes. I recall the grey wall.

I recall the Blue one, and then the Orange one :)

I still have an RSX-11M orange shelf in boxes in the attic. And the RL02s.

Re: Source code

I wonder if that was the office where I installed a Vax in late 1980

1980 I was playing with the Vax at Uni, the one in our office was installed 1982-ish, IIRC.

Re: Happy Days!

MAXSYSGRP or something like that as I recall.

Indeed so.

And I think you set that in VMB??

You may well be right. Damn, where did those past 30-odd years go? I do hope the rumours of a hobbyist license for x86 are true, I knew there was a reason not to throw out that old PC.

Re: Happy Days!

Or just halt in SYSBOOT, set the max privileged UID to something large, and continue the boot. Then every user became SYSTEM.

Source code

although copies of the listings can, apparently, be purchased.

You used to get copies of the listing with the systems, on microfiche. I remember many happy days poring through them, since for some never-explained reason our office had a microfiche reader.

What you had to pay for was actual source, on magtape. I vaguely remember that what you got lacked the build environment, but it was many, many microfortnights ago.

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)

Re: Simply stunning

Yes, I'm no fan of his electric cars, but Musk certainly showed that he can pull a great engineering team together.

Brings back happy memories of watching Saturn V Apollo launches as a child (also only on TV, fingers crossed I'll get to see a Falcon Heavy launch in person one day) and that twin landing was superb.

UK PM Theresa May orders review of online abuse laws in suffrage centenary speech

It hasn't come to fighting in the streets yet between hard right and hard left - but the pressures are building.

More likely to burst in Barcelona or Rome, than in London, though.

Re: The last general election results ...

Remember, some* of the 52% who voted to leave the EU believed the writing on the big red bus. Don't think for a second they can see through propaganda.

*no hard evidence, but it's certain a percentage did

And you can say exactly the same for some of the 48% who have been told that the world will end come March 2019. There's plenty of propaganda to blame both sides for.

A Hughes failure: Flat Earther rocketeer can't get it up yet again

Re: "Curvature" proves nuthin!

Seeing the so-called "Earth Curvature" proves nothing! Very sophomoric to try to use a rocket, manned or not, to "prove" the Earth is not flat.

Yes, one would think that simply going up would not be useful.

He should really fire that thing horizontally, in a perfect straight line (which should, technically, be easier). At some point he will the fly over the edge of the disc, and can then have the satisfaction of sending back images of the elephants as he sails off into space, knowing he was right. Or something.

Dori-no! PepsiCo boss says biz is planning to sell lady crisps

Re: Lady crisps

The French have beaten them to it, with a range of pseudo-British products including:

http://www.regentspark.fr/nos-produits/lady-chips-legumes

complemented also by Sir Shortbread, and others (although I'm not sure who would admit to a penchant for Lord Muffin...)

Long haul flights on a one-aisle plane? Airbus thinks you’re up for it

Re: The Golden Age of flying is over

They're entitled to that space - they paid for it.

And isn't the person who paid for a reclining seat entitled to use that? It is why the airline installed them, after all.

Re: How bad does it have to get?

Presumably at some point travellers look at more than headline ticket price, and begin to shun the worst airlines

It would be nice to think so, but I doubt it. For a European traveller heading long-haul for 1-2 weeks away the extra cost might not add much to the overall holiday, but for Americans who think of vacation in terms of days, a transatlantic flight for $500 instead of $1000 makes a long weekend in London possible. The choice isn't between "bus service" or "limo", it's between vacation or not.

Does anyone have any figures on how much long-haul economy travel is personal, versus business (company-paid)? In the latter case, as I noted before, we often have little choice. I might be able to justify $100 more to avoid three connections or a 3am start, but they won't pay the 50% surcharge even for premium economy, although I may be willing to pay it myself for a holiday flight,

Re: The Golden Age of flying is over

Some of us who do long-haul for business don't always have the option to spend a bit more & get more comfort, we're constrained by "lowest logical airfare" rules :(

That said, in cattle-class I really don't see much difference between 3+3 single-aisle, and 3-4-3 twin-aisle. Middle seats are still horrible, the rest are much the same. 2-4-2 is good, if you can get into one of the "twos". Upstairs on an A380 is OK for that reason, but then you have the 500-passenger immigration scrum on arrival.

Legroom &seat comfort are the main issues for me. At most I might look for the loo once during a flight, queues there aren't really a problem except for the poor sods in the aisle seats beside them.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Another Amazon Key door-lock hack

Re: The best thing that can be said about IoT...

Internet of Thieves?

Open source turns 20 years old, looks to attract normal people

Re: Amiga

Freely-distributable software predates even that. Ask any DECUS member from the 1970s.

Bluetooth 'Panty Buster' 'smart' sex toy fails penetration test

Apart from the headline I didn't see any double-entendres in the whole article. I don't know whether to be disappointed, or impressed by your forebearance on a Friday.

Data-by-audio whizzes Chirp palmed £100k to keep working with EDF

Re: How?

So how does that work?

Piezo-electric transducers? No radiated/received EM, which I would guess is the concern.

So you accidentally told a million people they are going to die: What next? Your essential guide...

Re: Good compendium of possible actions/inactions/mis-actions.

How long before somone in the Land of the Lawsuit decides to sue Employee 1 for child support on the basis that, facing inbound armageddon, they decided to "go out with a bang", and didn't see any poiint in taking precautions?

Bring the people 'beautiful' electric car charging points, calls former transport minister

The "Boris bike" name was a humourous play on BoJo's first name. Don't we already have convenient public utilities similarly named after John Hayes?

US Pentagon scrambles after Strava base leaks. Here's a summary of the new rules: 'Secure that s***, Hudson!'

Re: Yeah, right!

The average user has no clue how to adjust any so-called "privacy" settings

Suitable instructions for most IoT devices can be found here: http://www.willitblend.com/

Sysadmin crashed computer recording data from active space probe

Botanic? In my day it was in the Mews.

True, that was the official name. In engineering we just lumped it it with all the computer science stuff over at the far side of the Botanic gardens. I only remember CC staff actually calling it Mews.

Re: old lessons well learned

VMS has a utility to modify system parameters. Some changes can take effect immediately, some only after a reboot, and it was sometimes irritating to find that someone had modified something in the "active" set but not saved the changes to disk, so on the next reboot whatever problem had been fixed by the change would reappear.

On one occasion I was making such changes. I dutifully saved them to disk first, then to active, to be sure they wouldn't get lost. Unfortunately I'd mixed up my max & min values, setting the max below the min. The moment I saved to active the system stopped dead, didn't even have time to echo the fatal <CR>. Of course, when it rebooted it found the incorrect values on disk & promptly stopped again.

Fortunately VMS has "conversational boot" to allow changes to be made on the fly during boot...

Also remember the convention (just QUB or any 1900 installation?) for distinguishing O from 0 was different to that everywhere else.

IIRC the Electrical Engineering (Ashby) card punch operators used the opposite convention to the computer centre (Botanic), so you had to know who was going to punch your cards to know when to use O and when to use Ø... Thinking about it, it was possibly 1900-related, since the Ashby had a different setup.

FYI: Processor bugs are everywhere – just ask Intel and AMD

Re: stay on top of firmware updates

point your server's lifecycle controller at it via FTP/SMB. Tell it to update everything and it does, all remotely via the iDRAC.

Been a long time getting to this point but it's sure nice.

Until some miscreant uses this nice simple process to update your firmware and install a backdoor. There are advantages to making invisible software hard to update.

Google can't innovate anymore, exiting programmer laments

Re: My problem with Google

you can turn off features you don't want.

Personally I prefer programs where I can tun on the features I do want. Less hassle and fewer surprises that way.

Re: OpenStreetMap

They're smart enough to claim their errors are actually protection of copyright,

A trick known as a "Mountweazel".

Re: Thought experiment

Indeed. The IT world is surprisingly small. How long until Yegge turns up for an interview for his "dream job" ... and finds his ex-Google VP on the interview panel?

Google slaps mute button on stupid ads that nag you to buy stuff you just looked at

Re: Nice PR

If you autoplay videos or ads or music or whatever I take my business elsewhere.

I use Firefox with "media.autoplay.enabled=false"

Electric cars to create new peak hour when they all need a charge

Re: Wood Fired Autos

The carbon in a tree has been captured from the atmosphere within the last 20-30 years, so it's a closed cycle that doesn't increase overall CO2 levels. Burning coal is releasing carbon that was trapped millenia ago, it's much less friendly.

All the comments about the grid not having enough capacity and needing massive enlargement are just plain wrong -- the grid (and the generation behind it) has spare capacity almost all the time except at short power peaks, because if it didn't we'd get blackouts and power cuts all the time.

Don't just guess based on "if", do the calculations.

The UK grid has a generating capacity, flat out, of ~ 96GW so with 8760 hours in a year it could manage 840TWh if everything ran flat-out 24/7. Annual consumption is around 360TWh, so about 41% of that.

The energy consumed by road transport is around 270TWh for cars, and an additional 150TWh for road haulage, so 470TWh in total. That'smore than current electricity use, and the total is almost exactly the absolute maximum grid generation capacity.

There's no way the grid can run at 100% capacity 24/7, not least because demand isn't constant, nor is supply from things like solar and wind. Even without car charging the peak load can reach ~65GW. There is not "massive spare capacity".

You're also ignoring the simple practicalities of charging. A tank of petrol or diesel holds a lot of energy. No matter what the battery technology is, putting that much energy into a battery in an acceptable time requires levels of current/voltage that are impractical in a domestic situation, and dangerous to handle without training (much more so than filing a tank with petrol).

Yes, we need a replacement for fossil-fuelled ICE vehicles, but we need one that is more practical than batteries.

Re: Answering a few points in the comments...

No - a charge for newer versions of my car are the same as ours in terms of time. Improvements in efficiency and battery technology are helping loads - you will, of course, pay more.

Electric cars are already pretty efficient, there isn't room for much more gain. As for the batteries, the problem is still the same. No matter how good the technology, to get more range means more energy put into the battery. Of necessity that means charge at the same rate for longer, or a charge at a higher rate, and a higher charge rate is more load on the grid. There's no free lunch.

Re: Solution seems simple...

We need a separate fix for places with no sun. *cough * Scotland *cough *

Rainwater tanks on the roof for local hydro generation? Luxury models could use regenerative braking to pump water back up...

Re: Wireless charging pads

This would enable traffic hot-spots to be useful in that they could charge vehicles stuck in the rush hour

I see it now.

"But minister, if we add another lane to the M6 it will enable traffic to flow more freely, and so people will not be able to charge their cars when stuck in the jams. Then when they get home and plug in, the overload will cause blackouts. No, I'm sorry, but we have to reduce the number of lanes in order to keep the lights on."

Re: Even our government is years ahead of this lot

To help people charge at home as easily as possible, the Government is:

Ignoring the laws of physics?

Re: Answering a few points in the comments...

All of the pro-EV ideas here only make sense while EVs are a tiny minority. None of them scale to full use, due to tax or practical infrastructure issues.

Our EV works out cheaper by far than the car it replaced.

I'll bet you got a subsidy, and the "fuel" is charged at domestic 5% VAT, not road fuel VAT+duty of 61%. Remove the subsidy and price your electricty at the same per km as petrol or diesel, as must happen long term, and the cost wil be the same.

There are suppliers of electricity that are committed to only using greener methods, such as ecotricity in the UK

But they can't produce the same amount of power as the 'classic' methods. If all cars were EVs the UK would need to double it's annual electricity production to charge them. Can't be done with today's green technology.

Ranges, whilst still not up to scratch, are increasing each year

Double the range means double the energy stored in the battery. Inevitably that means double the charge time, or double the charge rate. The former is likely to be even less acceptable, the latter means doubling grid capacity and is potentially infeasible for domestic chargers on safety grounds.

in the lifetime of many readers the only car you can buy will be something that doesn't burn fosil fuel.

Entirely possible, but rechargeable battery-electric won't get us there.

Re: Off peak?

Pay less if charging in the wee hours overnight?

Only works if that's a significantly lower demand. Replace all ICE cars by electric and the charging demand over a year will be around 270TWh, about 2/3 that of normal grid use (domestic + business). Night time car-charging demand won't be off-peak anymore, it will be the same as daytime peak. So no discount.

Re: I've been pointing this out for years.

the cost of my motoring so far this month has been £42.60 and I've done more than 1000miles.

Yes, but 61% of road fuel price is tax + duty. No government is going to give up on that, whether you get your power from the grid or home PV. Electric cars are only significatly cheaper to "fuel" because they aren't a big enough market yet.

'There was no monetary incentive for this' = not what you want to hear about your tattoo

Pardon me, but a "tramp stamp" is a tattoo located on the lower back, just above the bottom.

I thought those were "arse antlers" ?

Meltdown/Spectre week three: World still knee-deep in something nasty

Re: Intel "shouldn't be selling CPUs?"

Speculative execution means that the CPU will decide to take a given branch because the branch predictor has guessed that this branch will be taken. This speculative branch is taken while other instructions are in-flight.

Yes, that I understand.

My confusion was that I was assuming that "conditional branch" meant something like a single "branch if xxx" instruction, whereas "unconditional branch" would be "branch always". I wasn't allowing for them to be separated, where a preceding test would later be followed by a branch always, the combination being the "conditional branch" which could be speculatively executed. Thanks.

Re: Intel "shouldn't be selling CPUs?"

The return register is always known

So how can a branch using it be speculative? Surely you only speculate when you don't know something for certain?

'The capacitors exploded, showering the lab in flaming confetti'

Re: Improbable

Linear Technology introduced the LT1070, which made it a whole lot easier. Not easy, just easier.

I like the TSR 1 and friends, not cheap but really easy. Drop-in replacement for a 7805, no heatsink required.

Why did I buy a gadget I know I'll never use?

Re: Sprouts - the Devil's vegetable

I was taught about the crosses so that they would cook better.

Don't cut crosses, they make the sprouts overcook. It's an idea dreamt up by people that think the right way to serve cabbage is as a purée.

Re: Guilty as charged...

I found some 23-Pin (no typo) D-types the other day. IIRC they were for Amiga video connections. But they might still be useful someday.

Take a bow, TalkTalk, Post Office, Vodafone! You win most-whinged-about telcos award

Re: "The Register asked TalkTalk what it is doing to address its abysmal track record."

There's clearly only one thing they can do now, the time-honoured solution: Rename the company to pretend they're somebody else.

Don't panic... but our fragile world is drifting away from the Sun

Re: Boldly going

How long before we break orbit and can go exploring the cosmos from the comfort* of our own planet?

Or city? Maybe it's time to re-read my old copy of Cities in Flight...