Posts by Kernel

Tesla to recall almost three million vehicles over hidden door handles

Re: Morris Marina's automotive legacy

"I doubt BL's car designers ever knew or cared about aerodynamics. We were lucky their designs managed to include circular wheels and tyres."

Having owned a Morris 1800 "Landcrab" during my long distant youth, I was more impressed with the fact that they knew how to make a very wide and flat front seat fold down to be flush with the rear seat. Folding down both front seats, combined with the lack of a transmission tunnel, presented a convenient analogue to a double bed, which was appreciated by more than one young lady at the time. I still have fond memories of one particular evening with my ex-wife in that car!

"China is doing something about no buttons. I thought next year even. I'll guess China auto's will cost an extra 50 bucks next year. Ouch./s"

I'm currently awaiting delivery of a new Chinese built 4x4 PHEV ute - it has physical buttons, in addition to on-screen controls, for things like HVAC, audio system, drive modes, diff locks, cruise control - basically all the stuff you might want to change while driving. The things that are on-screen controls only tend to be stuff that you might set once in a while or at the start of a trip but would not normally change while under way eg., battery charge limits, turning the various driver assist features off/on, tweaking steering load, regen braking intensity, etc.

Siemens and Reinhausen turn up the voltage for hungry AI racks

Re: Really?

"AC-to-DC conversion has to happen somewhere. Downconversion has to happen somewhere. Makes sense to do them in the same lump."

It does, when you're talking about 10s of amps at 48V (my back ground is telecomms), but when you're measuring current in kiloAmps the saving in copper justifies the use of high DC distribution voltages.

Re: I hope suitable stickers are everywhere

Well, 400V DC distribution to End-of-Row has been common in telecommunications for quite a few years and 800V is starting to appear in some long range electric vehicles, so I guess the labeling issues have been resolved.

What happened when AI ran into the cold hard reality of the legal profession

"

A judge cannot recommend a punishment for professional misconduct by a barrister,"

I have seen coverage of one US case (some interesting US based court sessions on Youtube when you look) where a lawyer was caught using incorrect AI citations in a filing - the judge referred the lawyer to his bar association and also ordered that the lawyer personally, not his company, refunded his client's total legal costs up to that point in the case. In the US it would appear that a judge does have some power to directly sanction a lawyer for misconduct.

Blustering Blackbeard's PC was all at sea, sysadmin got him shipshape in seconds

Re: A switch...

"but hadn't turned the socket on.

Nice way of telling you're in the UK without directly saying so."

Nice way of telling us you live in the US without directly saying so - I've done exactly the same thing with my laptop several times and I live about as far away from the UK as it's possible to get without leaving the planet.

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

"Age indication, i.e. the administrator setting the age of the user."

This would work well - not!

I'll take the example of my son's household - he is a builder and my d-i-l is a senior paramedic. Neither of them computer illiterate, but for them computers are merely another tool in which their only interest is "does it work or not?"

I can assure you that for any computing device in their household the only holder of the system admin password is my 12 year old grandson (and has been for a number of years) - he's a good kid, but he's not going to cripple his own ability to maintain their computers.

DOGE bites taxman

Re: Billionaries who don't want to pay taxes...

'That's what really sucks, for the people who have everything on W2/1099 and take the standard deduction, the government could send you a tax form that's filled in and say "if you accept our calculations, sign and return this form [with payment if one is required]".'

What, kind of like the system New Zealand has had in place for a decade or more? - except that if we agree with the assessment we don't have to piss around signing and returning anything. We just a) pay what we owe via on-line banking, or b) wait a couple of weeks for our refund to appear in our nominated bank account.

I can't exactly remember the last time I had to sacrifice a tree to file my tax return, but it was probably last century that on-line tax filing (directly via Inland Revenue Department's web site) became a standard way of filing - now days for most of us IRD just gathers our income data itself, applies all the standard deductions and sends us the proposed result, no individual taxpayer effort required.

AWS outage turned smart homes into dumb boxes – and sysadmins into therapists

Re: First world problem

It gets worse than that - a woman in New Zealand was silly enough to announce in the national news that a) she couldn't remember how to turn on her bedside light manually, and b), that she had to go to bed in a cold room because the smart plug her heater was plugged into didn't work. I've never looked at one of the Alexa controlled smart plugs, but I assume now that they must lock the appliance plug into themselves when connectivity is lost, thus preventing the obvious solution from being applied.

Researchers intercept unencrypted satellite traffic from space blabbermouths

"You never worked on T-carrier stuff?"

Nope - never saw it where I worked (it was mentioned as a curiosity during our training, but that's all).

Regardless, the subject you were making uniformed, or even outright wrong, comments about was fibre optics, not long forgotten PCM systems. Whatever the failings of T-carrier systems, the fact is that current fibre optics can easily go several thousand km without regen - submarine cables are the most obvious example - no submerged regens, just protocol agnostic optical amplifiers all the way. Even the Southern Cross network, which is over 25 years old and is now being overlaid used amplifiers, not regens, between landing stations.

"Traditionally, they were one mile apart, clear across the country. Fiber spread them out a trifle further.

One little known aspect of this kind of digital signalling is that the signal doesn't get amplified at repeaters, it gets regenerated. That means it is read, and then a new copy is generated."

How to tell us you know nothing about carrier grade fibre optics without telling us you know nothing about carrier grade fibre optics.

In my 47 year career as a telco and vendor support engineer I never encountered, or even heard rumour of, any system, analogue or digital, open wire line, copper cable or fiibre that needed amplifiers or regens every mile or so - 60~90km is more typical for optical systems and modern DWDM systems have optical amplifiers, not regens, at those sites. Signals are normally only 'read' at sites where a wavelength is terminated and that can be at spacings of 100's or even 1000's of km apart, depending on the modulation type and FEC in use.

This is how Elon's Department of Government Efficiency will work – overwriting the US Digital Service

Re: While I'm asking questions ...

"Then there is that salute to explain away - Is there some medical condition akin to a "trigger finger" that effects the arm?"

I believe that it is known as the "Bellamy Salute" and was used in US schools during the Pledge of Allegiance up until the end of 1942 - it was named after the author of said pledge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute

As such, it would appear to be a particularly US thing.

Woman stuck upside down under rock for hours after trying to retrieve dropped phone

Re: And she was barefoot ?

"What the blazes was she doing barefoot in the hills ?

Is this a missed Darwin award ?"

Once upon a time we were all barefoot in the hills (or on the plains) and to the best of my knowledge we are not currently considered to be a critically endangered species.

On this basis I would hazard a guess that under the Darwinian theory of evolution that this is not a significant factor driving natural selection - even in Australia.

Apple AirPods Pro 2 can be sold as hearing aids, says FDA

"The NHS issues ones certainly aren't all BT enabled, the ones I'm familiar are clunky over-ear affairs that don't appear to have changed in forty years, use zinc air batteries that are always running out out, and are prone to over-amplifying things like screaming kids."

That's odd, because as well as my over-the-ear hearing aids feature digital signal processing (they can mute a sound such as a hammer blow before it reaches my ears), selectable hearing profiles for different situations, can be individually controlled to reduce the level of "screaming kids" or loud bands from either side and get around 8 days use out of a zinc air cell - how long do a set of Airpods go on a single charge?

I was also offered the option, about 5 years ago, of buying a model with real-time language translation - no, hearing aids haven't changed much in the last 40 years.

Feds urge 3D printing industry to end DIY machine guns

Re: What difference will this make?

"The US has had lots of guns for a VERY long time and has only recently had this problem with them."

There are other countries that have more guns per person out in the wild, including military issue weapons, but don't have the 'gun problem' that the US has - I personally think it's more a mental health and cultural problem, rather than simple availability of guns.

iGulu F1 could be the hoppy ending to your home-brew horror show

Re: Looking at that sample

"I'd expect your horse to live only about six more weeks."

A Barry Crump fan, perchance?

Missing scissors cause 36 flight cancellations in Japan

Re: The ghost of 9/11 casts a long shadow

"Even if they don't hijack an airliner to crash it into something valuable then a mass stabbing incident in the air would still be a major win for the terrorists and would look awful from a security standpoint etc."

The terrorists (or glorious freedom fighters, depending on your POV and who wrote the particular history book) have already won - that happened as soon as the security theatre was introduced - with most of the Western world running shit-scared on a 24x7 basis they have no need for further "wins", their job is done.

HCL's back-to-office plan: Come in three days a week, or forget about holidays

Correction?

Surely, when referring to India, that should read "change into of their (kurta) pajamas and head into the office".

Trump threatens to send Meta's Mark ‘Zuckerbucks’ to prison if reelected president

Non-resident voting rights

It seems to me that if the US are going to continue to refer to their President as "Leader of the Free World", then all of us who live in that "Free World" should get to vote on who exactly gets to fill that role, US resident or not.

Some smart meters won't be smart at all once 2/3G networks mothballed

Re: So, smart meter joy is continuing

"Quite a lot of us here have probably messed around with those little solar robotics kits that are out there...putting solar panels on your house is the same fucking thing but scaled up.

We're all led to believe that 240v is extremely dangerous to work with and needs specialist qualifications to go near, but the reality is, it's not actually that dangerous...if you're fit and healthy a whack from 240v mains will just give you a short bang and shake you up for a minute or two...it's unlikely to kill you."

On the other hand, I've regularly seen one string of my solar array churning out 12A or more at around 400V DC - that'll give you a short bang alright, but you'll need an awful lot of shaking afterwards.

911 goes MIA across multiple US states, cause unclear

Re: Scope of 911 emergency call number

"With pulse dialing "111" is effectively just three hookswitch taps with a slight pause between each one."

Depends on how your network is set up - in New Zealand we used reverse dials, so "111" was three trains of nine pulses - "999" as an emergency number could be dialed by wires in the wind.

I'm not sure which, if any, other countries used a reverse dial system.

Nokia walks the walk about its RAN to play on Uncle Sam’s China fears

Re: There is no Nokia.

I think you'd better have a look at www.nokia.com - it is very much a real company and it's only relationship to HMD Global is a licensing agreement for the use of Nokia's IP and name on HMD's cellphones.

Deep Green gets £200M from power supplier to scale waste heat reuse

This is probably a more productive approach to heating pools with waste heat

It would be nice to know how this is working out, 7 years down the track.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-23104502

Driverless cars swerve traffic tickets in California even if they break the law

Re: If Corporations Are People

">as non-US-citizens are also people

The supreme court and 80M voters might not take that as axiomatic"

Not quite that simple - to quote from Section 1 of the 14th Amendment:

" No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Cloud engineer wreaks havoc on bank network after getting fired

Amazing!

I am astounded that an IT professional, who is presumably reasonably well paid and would claim to have far superior computing knowledge and skills than the average 'Luser", is sufficiently stupid as to view porn on the company laptop.

Surely he could have afforded to buy himself a cheap personal chrome book or laptop for this purpose and avoided the entire mess he's now in? He's basically destroyed his career in order to save $200~$300, or there abouts. Do they not teach common sense at IT school?

Musk tells advertisers to 'go f**k' themselves as $44B X gamble spirals into chaos

Re: Delusional narcissist

"An example of this is Queen Victoria. Her father also had a personal union with Hanover, and when he died she only succeeeded him as QUeen of the UK but not Hanover, because the later did not allow women to rule."

Victoria's father was never King of the United Kingdom and Ireland - that would be her uncle, William IV, whom she succeeded when he died. Her father, Edward, was Duke of Kent when he died, before Victoria's 1st birthday.

Ex-school IT admin binned student, staff accounts and trashed phone system

"the ex-admin should first learn of their firing by discovering their creds no longer work."

Ah, constructive dismissal - cue compensation for loss of dignity, lost income, etc., paid by the employer to the ex-admin, not to mention the possibility of an order to reinstate employment.

In many countries there are very specific processes that need to be followed to dismiss someone - calling them into the office and telling them they are fired doesn't cut it except in very exceptional circumstances.

US nuke reactor lab hit by 'gay furry hackers' demanding cat-human mutants

Re: Beware the law of unintended consequences

"The same people who believe having an ultra-strong, cat-brained mecha-cat-girl companion would be a "safe" companion are the same sort of people who also believe the "self-driving" feature of Tesla cars is "safe." who've never owned a cat."

Fixed that for you.

CEO Satya Nadella thinks Microsoft hung up on Windows Phone too soon

Re: I beg to differ

"The shame is that Microsoft bought Nokia simply so it could destroy the company."

Nokia has made 711 million Euro profit in the first 3 quarters of 2023 - not as good as lat year, but still far from destroyed.

‘How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie’ guide updated by US and South Korean authorities

Re: Excellent!

"So rather than remote-desktopping into your work computer you have all the company data, software , licenses, keys etc on everyone's laptop to be left in a bar"

Of course not - why would I have all that lot on my laptop?

The access method was remote into my employer's network from work laptop (MFA required), remote into customer's network from my employer's network (at least one layer of MFA required) and then remote into specific product from customer's network - and as we dived deeper into the specific product many of the passwords were not known to the customer, just in case they were tempted to play. (At one of my employers a trained IT professional decided to change the Windows domain name, just to see if he could - that was 2.5 days of sitting on our arses while it was sorted.)

Our customer did not allow vendors, such as myself, access directly from the internet, it had to be via a dedicated VPN from my employer's network.

Excellent!

"Preventing use of remote desktop protocol on all company devices and prohibit using remote desktop applications for work;"

For me that would've meant compensation for constructive dismissal as my employer would be effectively preventing me from doing my job - it couldn't be done without remote access to customer's systems.

Pacific telco backed by Australia, Japan, US bins Huawei

Nokia don't make phones - Nokia branded phones are made by HMD Global, a Finnish company that has its phones built in China.

Nokia is a Finnish company that has its products manufactured in many parts of the world, including China, various European countries and the US.

US Air Force burns more money on electric flying taxis

Re: "almost 1,000 times quieter than a helicopter."

"Yes, I've seen it, I think it was a Mark Rober video.

Astonishing development."

Not really - to quote from the service manual of my 2007 Mazda BT-50 (Ford Ranger) ute:

'Noise (wind noise) which occurs during fan operation has been reduced due to nonuniform positioning of the fan blades.'

The fan definitely looks a bit different.

Aliens crash landed on Earth – and Uncle Sam is covering it up, this guy tells Congress

Re: Don't tell me, show me.

"People are convinced that the gubmint is completely inept, and at the same time they are sure they can keep secrets indefinitely, even through parties in power constantly change."

More importantly, what is the probability of any military organization keeping secret something that would otherwise be likely to open up massive funding opportunities to them?

Samsung’s midrange A54 is lovely, but users won't feel seen

Re: A pain in the ... ear

"And FM Radio... still hanging to my A50 because newer models are missing that feature."

Just bought a Nokia C32 with 3.5mm audio jack and inbuilt FM radio - also up to 512GB microSD and (not or) two SIM slots.

Startup that charged $1.20 a day for coworking space in nightclubs folds

Re: Back in the late '80s to mid '90s ...

"Aside: we forget the modern coffee shop only came into existence in circa 1997."

People were regularly meeting to do business in London coffee shops from the second half of the 17th century - by 1688 there were 80 coffee shops in London, each one being associated with particular business activities. One group that used to gather in Edward LLoyd's coffee shop to exchange shipping intelligence and arrange marine insurance contracts is still in business today.

If you want to go more modern, Robert Harris (NZ) has been in the coffee business, including cafes, since 1952.

California man jailed after manure-to-methane scheme revealed as bull

Re: On a more serious note ......

"Is the CO2 released from the aerobic digestion and the CO2 produced making the energy to power the aeration pumps less or more than the CO2 produced if all that waste was anaerobically digested to produce methane and we then burnt the methane to produce useful energy? And is the byproduct a useful nutrient for use as a replacement for traditional chemical fertilisers? (nitrates being another big issue)"

It's been a while since the initial publicity, but the waste is digested to produce methane which is used as fuel for a couple of largish diesels which have been modified to run on gaseous fuel. The solid waste left at the end of the process is used as fertilizer in public gardens around the city (eg., https://hamiltongardens.co.nz/collections/ in the non-food producing parts), along with composted food waste, which is collected as a separate stream in the city's rubbish collection service.

On a more serious note ......

Unfortunately this type of scam has the effect of discouraging investors in genuine examples of this technology. What the story completely failed to mention is that shit to methane is a long established and successful technology - our local sewage plant has, for several decades, been generating enough electricity to run the plant using methane they produce from fermenting shit.

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

Re: UK specific model?

"I think I'll go for the waterproof one and when the battery needs replacing make the decision to replace the phone or downgrade it by having a new battery put in at the expense of losing the IP rating."

It's not that hard to have both - I have a handheld radio transceiver that has an IP67 rating, an external battery that is designed for rapid replacement in the field, ports for programming/external mic and speaker and a removable antenna - all of these have seals which maintain the watertight rating when fitted correctly. It cost me less than all but the most basic of cellphones, so cost is not a factor either.

Can noise-cancelling buds beat headphones? We spent 20 hours flying to find out

Re: I'm curious

"I either have earmeltingly loud industrial metal on a proper stereo; or silence as my preference. The idea of less noise on a plane is appealing; however I’m acutely aware of how disgusting and problematic jamming something in my ear for 9 hours will be."

The day may well come when your musical volume preferences will lead you to either live with jamming something in your ears all day every day, or living in a world of near silence. If you aren't keen on wearing earbuds for nine hours on occasion, you certainly won't like hearing aids every day for for 13 hours or so.

Australia asks Twitter how it will mod content without staff, gets ghosted

That she has admitted to.

FTFY.

Payments firm accused of aiding 'contact Microsoft about a virus' scammers must cough $650k

Re: They've tried calling me before

"The Windows key on my Linux laptop isn't mapped to anything they expect"

Yes, been in that situation with one of them as well - but only after we'd spent the best part of 15 minutes trying to make it work, at which point I was informed that yes, my laptop did need to be turned on first.

After 30 minutes (this is when it was realised I needed to be running Windows, not Linux for all of this to work as per script) the conversation got quite terse - my friendly Microsoft support person listed all the things he was going to come and do to my wife - I told him that she was fine with that so long as he washed the smell of the goat he'd previously fucked off first - the call ended at this point, I think we got cut off.

BOFH: We send a user to visit Kelvin – Keeper of the Batteries

Left-footed boots

Many years ago, when I worked for a government department that ran the nation's communications network, one of our local store man reputedly had a large supply of pre-loved left foot gumboots available for immediate issue.

Why? Because most cable jointers wore out the right boot when pushing on their shovel while digging up a cable, leaving the left foot in fairly good condition still, far to good to be thrown out with their right footed counterpart.

Fancy trying the granddaddy of Windows NT for free? Now's your chance

Things to never do on a VAX workstation

Never set the colour of all items on the screen (ie., background, text, mouse cursor, etc.) to be the same - these changes are very persistent and as a mere user the only way I could fix it involved the use of another identical workstation, a ruler and some very carefully measured mouse movements.

The support team's response to my problem was amusement, and, if I did manage to recover, could I please let them know how I did it.

Virgin Obit: Launch company files for bankruptcy in US

Meanwhile, in another country far, far away .......

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/131688822/dawn-aerospace-successfully-tests-rocketpowered-spaceplane

The most bizarre online replacement items in your delivered shopping?

"Cat (carnivore, same as penguin)"

More than just carnivores, cats are "obligate carnivores" for whom most (if not all) vegetable matter is anywhere from mildly to very toxic.

Welcome to Muskville: Where the workers never leave

" If an employee quits their job or is fired, they would have 30 days to vacate the premises."

Ah, so employment conditions have improved considerably - when my great-grandfather was killed in a pit disaster in the north of England in the early 1900's my great-grandmother only got two weeks notice to move out of the company house (although apparently she did get a free bible as well, which Musk doesn't seem to offering).

60% of Germany's 5G network is Huawei, says Chinese embassy

Re: ...and 100% of Germany's Internet is Cisco........................

"...... or alternatively Nokia ( or Alcatel / Philips? do they still do telecoms stuff?? )"

I don't know what Phillips does nowdays, but Alcatel merged with Lucent to become Alcatel-Lucent long ago, who were then bought by Nokia almost as long ago - got the staff goodies from all three to remind me of the changes.

What are now Alcatel cellphones are made by some Chinese company that bought the rights to use the old Alcatel name and branding on their products.

HMD offers Nokia phone with novel concept: Designed to be repaired by its owner

"

@Kernel

The Wikipedia has this about HMD:"

Yes - I was working for Nokia at the time and I was (still am) sufficiently impressed by the lack of baked in crap on the HMD/Nokia phones that all 3 of our phones at home are of this brand.

"but maybe that will change with the new owners."

New owners? - all Nokia branded phones since Microsoft stopped making Nokia branded phones have been made by HMD - it says so on the back of my old Nokia 8, one of the earliest re-launched Nokia phones.