Posts by MonsieurTM

FYI Russia is totally hacking the West's labs in search of COVID-19 vaccine files, say UK, US, Canada cyber-spies

Given that comparative death rates that the UK has vs Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Belarussia, etc) bluntly I think the way we go about it is most unsuccessful. Why the heck would Russia want to follow our death rate?

Re: This is just a diversion. They (USSR/FSB/KGB) get their real feeds from BJ and DJT

Haven't you seen the news about the CIA & Trump permitting them to run operations without any oversight? More likely it is CIA crackers pretending to be someone else....

Re: So short sighted and petty.

The news was full of assertions, but no proof. All this crying of "Russia hacked our elections" Russia did this, Russia did that. It sounds like a child blaming the dog that ate their homework. Come on: it is not as if Russia, China, the UK, the USA and any other nation with the resources has not been investigating a vaccine for months and months. All this so-called blame is very post-facto. Also note that the UK government has a track record in blaming others (Russia) for it's local ills. Recall when May blamed Russia for the Skripal poisoning: each time that news came out, Brexit was going south for her. A very curious correlation.... Why not make a hone-pot full of guff & let them at that instead? (Hmmm: if I can think f it, it has already been done.)

Re: Why?

Hahahaha!

Fancy some post-weekend reading? How's this for a potboiler: The source code for UK, Australia's coronavirus contact-tracing apps

And the BCS position?

https://www.bcs.org/more/about-us/press-office/press-releases/new-bcs-study-supports-coronavirus-tracing-app-if-privacy-measures-convince-the-public/

Basically "the only issue the BCS sees is that the public will have to be duped, brainwashed or forced to install it". I hang my head in shame, as a MBCS, has produced such a white-wash.

Review of IR35 is in: Quelle surprise, UK.gov will forge ahead with controversial tax reforms in the private sector

In wrote to Javid & my MP. Only got a response today. The usual fob-off guff. The Lords review was a white-wash start to finish.

Re: HMRC : Singlehanded incompetent.

Yeah "the Turd" as he is affectionately called gotnusbinto 80bln debit for RBS and then there is the rest...

US Homeland Security mistakenly seizes British ad agency's website in prostitution probe gone wrong

"Special relationship"?!

I've had it with these motherflipping eggs on this motherflipping train

Cripes! Good jib it was not me! I'm partial to one of those Thai 1000 year-old eggs (the real Mcoy, not those weedy 100year old efforts) with lashings if Durian fruit. It takes a week to wash the smell out of my Keck's, so the BnC says.

Skills Matter... sadly, so does cash flow: 15-year-old London dev events biz enters administration

Might this also be an indication of how poor many UK companies are at the continuing education of their staff? Perhaps also how seriously that staff believe they might even need continuing education?

RIP: First space-walk badass Alexei Leonov, who made it to 85 despite best efforts of Soviet machine

I have seen the film and highly recommend it. (Note : I have read the 4 volume set of Chertok's memoirs, the book in the Buran, the books on the Salyut & Mir space stations amongst others.)

I was at a the Science Museum and had the opportunity to listen to Leonov in conversation there. A great man, who flew amongst the stars. Now he resides in Heaven. RIP. A great loss.

Cosmo Communicator: More phone than the Gemini, more pocket computer than phone

I have an unused Gemini, which I liked. But the keyboard <ENTER> key gave up. And it is useless as a phone. Oh - and the bluetooth was well dodgy. (Seriously: anyone want to buy it? For postage & a beer? Reply on this forum.)

I look forward to my Communicator (I'm an early backer) - as this I expect/hope will solve all of those issues. I loved the keyboard on the Gemini. Beautiful for emails/LinkedIn/etc.

Stallman's final interview as FSF president: Last week we quizzed him over Microsoft visit. Now he quits top roles amid rape remarks outcry

Well done The Register, for publishing this interesting interview with this important figure! I am most pleased that you did!

Clutching at its Perl 6, developer community ponders language name with less baggage

Long live Perl! Long live the IOCCC! Long live N-Intercal!

For the record it is, of course tabs, not spaces!

Industry reps told the UK taxman everything wrong with extending IR35. What happened next will astound you

The shame is that contracting is needed: for the flexibility that provides employers. Once IR35 goes in, many of those roles formerly done by contractors will be shifted abroad, thus a net loss to the UK economy and the exchequer. Employers will have to fill some roles by making them permanent, which will cost the employer, as they will have to pay appropriate benefits as befits a permanent role. Thus employers are stung too. IR35 is extremely poorly thought-out legislation that punishes the British economy, brought in by MPs who simply seem to wish to bulldoze it through.

We are shocked to learn oppressive authoritarian surveillance state China injects spyware into foreigners' smartphones

Ha ha serves people right for visiting and givingoney to an oppressive regime... Uh-oh... I live is the UK... Oops...

14 sailors die aboard Russian cable spy, er, ocean research nuke sub after fire breaks out

How horrific... My thiughts go to those that gave their lives and their families...

Not like the good ole USofA hasn't been sniffing underwear cables itself...

Tesla's autonomous lane changing software is worse at driving than humans, and more

Yet again the get-out-of-jail-free card is played: " the driver must be in control at all times". When will Tesla etc get it in their heads that this is a safer lye critical system with all that implies: insurance, verification, validation, innumerable tests, etc. Simple OTA updates just do not cut it. Consider that when driving a bus, lorry, etc, many countries require more than just a simple drivinf license. On a road I can cause multiple-car crashes and thus major loss of life. Let alone city driving where the system may need to "choose" the least-worat option: kill granny or the school kid, or plough into a bus queue. The latter is utterly untested in law for autonomous vehicles. It is a wooly area legally for humans! How can a system based upon 1st order logic work correctly in our higher-order, messy, human world?

We'll hack back at Russians, declare UK ministers in cyber-Blitz blitz

Yet another attempt to give tax money to a load of louts, justified by not-news and no facts. Otherwise known as nepotism.

NASA boffins may just carve your name on a chip and send it to Mars if you ask nicely

My mother is not an ethnic minority and her name is rarely pronounced correctly. Like mine.

What about those names on the DVD on New Horizons? I welcome the anal probes from my alien overlords!

May Day! PM sacks UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson for Huawei 5G green-light 'leak'

Re: "he was either very confident or very stupid "

I am sure there are many ex public school boys who do not fit into your flippant comment about them. Please retract it. Thank you.

Thank you, your DNA data will help secure your… oh dear, we've lost that too

I aledge, in an entirely unconfirmed and circumstantial manner, that Mr. Dabbs must be an agent of Mr. Putin. Clearly. My ample evidence may be summed up as "because"!

(For the record: the above comment is satire.)

Data-spewing Spectre chip flaws can't be killed by software alone, Google boffins conclude

As noted before, the increase in performance by using a suoer-scalar processor model with multilayered caches has become a flawed model. In modern times the goalposts changed to permit ready access to many computers. That access has been exploited by untrusted code. That untrusted code is what has moved the goal posts on the superscalar model. Intel operated a de-facto monopoly since the late 90s (ref. cases of shareholders vs. Dell). That monopoly highly constrained competition, so alternative, non-super-scalar architectures were not widely developed. So to some extent this issue has been enhanced by Intel's monopolistic practices.

Pokemon No! Good news: You can now ban the virtual pests, er, pets to stop nerds wandering around your property

Frankly pokemon go should be banned (consider criminal action, etc) from placing their tripe anywhere near residential areas. I'd legislate that the only suitable locations be near cliffs, toxic waste sites, football pitches (whilst a match is occurring), dangerous wildlife pens, high security jails, top secret bunkers and similar. Basically only places where these nerks would get a sharp wake-up call PDQ.

Oh yes, and now if you complain you get your details, including GPS, held on a dubious data base (of unknown security) managed by coders and a business already noted as being utter cretins. Thanks, oh yes thanks so f.....ing much.

Typical: the corporate gets to still plague people with their pokemon stuff and yet it takes innocent people at least 15 days of potential hell to get rid of gormless nerks. Oh and if you are in an apartment block you are utterly stuffed: no recourse at all. This is why, as a dev, I think fatwas against devs is far too lenient. Yes yes others will bleat it was the business. But if the selfish, ignorant, naive devs didn't code it then it would not happen.

I am just a mapper: Solar drones take to the skies above Blighty

Re: Just because you're paranoid...

Surely "frikkin'" laser???

Ivan to be left alone: Russia preps to turn its internet into an intranet if West opens cyber-fire

Well look at it this way: if "the west" decides to cut links to Russia, they will naturally want their part of the internet to keep working. So that their business can still operate, albeit internally to Russia. Big deal. What us the ahick-horror value of this. No "naughty Ivan" here. Surely most states consider this as a disaster scenario. Given the current McCarthyite, anti-Russian hysterial this seems Luke a logical response for the Russian Parliament.

Do please recall that our own ISPs keep records of our own digital communications for 7 odd days as part of their legal obligations under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1914. (Which would include this post.) This permits the UK government to review all communication in time of national crisis. (Think war.) So are we, in the UK, not subject to governmental oversight too? Yet we are apparently happy to be subject to that oversight.

Mystery sign-poster pities the fool who would litter the UK's West Midlands

Re: Another design approach:

That made me laugh!

Re: It's not much of an idea when thought through.

Agreed: I think (despite the poor spelling) that the sign is a great idea! Shame, even if we cannot name...

Tens to be disappointed as Windows 10 Mobile death date set: Doomed phone OS won't see 2020

Yet the curse of the Metro UI lives on....

South Korea reckons mystery hackers cracked open advanced weapons servers

Oh come on, surely it must be everyone's bogeyman-du-jour, Russia!

US midterms barely over when Russians came knocking on our servers (again), Democrats claim

Yet again we Russia being blamed in a well-written article that on the face of it appears to be sound. Yet again no evidence is presented. Yet again we are asked to believe in "evil Russia". This is now a troll. Stop repeating the troll "Russia bad".

Russia does not gave the technical kniow-how to perform such influence on the most technologically advanced nation in the world! This is absurd.

Cyber-insurance shock: Zurich refuses to foot NotPetya ransomware clean-up bill – and claims it's 'an act of war'

Given that it was the UK govt that claimed it was an act of wat, with very little intelligence to back it up. One might assume Zurich have consulted their extensive legal panel. Does this imply that relatively unfounded govt statements can now carry considerable legal weight? If found for the claimant, then that would put the UK govt"s claim of an act off war on very shaky legal basis...

Happy Christmas! Bloodhound SSC refuelled by Yorkshire business chap

Brilliant news! Well done Mr. Warhurst! What a chap to step in at the last minute and rescue to project! Finally someone put their money where the mouth is! Hurrah!

Peak tech! Bacon vending machine signals apex of human invention

Come on, UK obviouy. Smoked back bacon is food of the Gods!

Bloodhound SSC reaches the end of the road for want of £25m

The collapse of this delightfully eccentric attempt makes me feel ashamed to be British (I donated about £1k over the years). For the want of £25million (+stuff). What is wrong with British society that the highly wealthy have lost the ideals of philanthropy?

NASA chief in Moscow: 'We will fly again on a Russian Soyuz rocket'

Re: Scheduling...

Excatly. Everyone seems to forget that the crew in a Soyuz are spam-in-a-can until they open the hatch to the ISS. (Yes they give them stufff to do to make them feel busy: it is just psychological.) Everything else can be done automatically or as a backup remotely from the MKS in Moscow. Sending up an unmanned Soyuz would not even require the investigation to complete... Thus the time for the crew on board can be extended to at least 500 days. Yes they will get bored. Yes they will miss their families. But then that is space for you.

Cosmonauts they are tough as nails; I expect astronauts too. I'd imagine they'd have viewed that the unplanned decent was at most disappointing regarding not reaching the ISS. No "brown trousers" in the slightest.

Leaked memo: No internet until you clean your bathroom, Ecuador told Julian Assange

Apparently other restrictions:

"Visitors are also slapped with new restrictions. They must submit visit requests in writing to the embassy chief, giving their name, nationality, profession and place of work, reason for visiting, email and social media accounts, and even the serial numbers for phones and other devices they wish to bring inside. The new rules even mandate the collection of IMEIs, unique identification numbers specific to a phone handset.

While repeat visitors receive a less restrictive screening process, they can have their access revoked at any time without an explanation. All visitor data will be turned over to the Ecuadorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other unspecified parties.

The restrictions include a threat to use UK police to arrest visitors or seize communications equipment should the journalist violate the lengthy list of rules. Adding insult to injury, the embassy threatened to remove Assange's cat to a shelter should they decide he is not cleaning up after the animal properly."

So if one wishes to visit Assange, one has to give over significantly intrusive details that may be passed on to "... other unspecified parties.". Wow. So potential total loss of "freedom" and welcome to no-fly lists, intrusive (TSA) customs searches, etc, etc.

It is disgusting that Assange is held, without trial in an effective jail for so long. Call ourselves civilised: 3rd world countries must be laughing at our hypocrisy.

With sorry Soyuz stuffed, who's going to run NASA's space station taxi service now?

Re: Still mad about the Shuttle program...

Although your analysis of the use-case for the large wings on the shuttle is correct: it was *still* a bad idea: It turns out to be *MUCH* cheaper and more reliable to use ICBMs over the North (or South) Pole to do this, than launch the shuttle over a pole, nuke Russia, re-enter, turn through 90 degrees (what the big wings were for) then land.

Russian rocket goes BOOM again – this time with a crew on it

Thank you: well said. The last people to die in a Soyuz was on landing from Salyut 1. A total of 4 people have died, sadly. The first was Komarov. Those last 3: Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev in 1971. One must not forget Valentin Bondarenko.For a total of 1+1+3=5. So how many died in the US space program? 3+7+7. (Apologies for not naming them all.)

Read that again 5 vs. 17.

Re: Station keeping

The Russian segment is designed to be run either automatically independently, under ground-control or via cosmonauts on board. The multiple redundancy was designed in on purpose. The Soviets & Russians have great experience with de-staffing and re-staffing space stations: e.g. Salyut (commonly unmanned), Mir. Mir did not suffer permanent issues with de-staffing. It did suffer from the collapse of the Russian economy after the break up of the Soviet Union meaning that the items that previously came from the Ukraine now cost a lot of money that Roscosmos (of the time) simply could not afford.

Re: Station keeping

You are correct, the automated Progress resupply ships & the Zvezda module in the Russian segment are both designed (one as a back-up for the other) to keep the ISS at station. Either automatically or under control from the MKS is Moscow (again redundant backup).

Uuum: wrong, again. The hypergolic propellants used mean that ignition in space is 100% reliable. This is vital. Hypergolic propellants have been used in all space-based chemical engines. The ones designed by Isaev's design bureau were the only ones to be 100% reliable. (The current hypergolic engines in the Soyuz, Progress and Russian-segment of the ISS are all direct descendants of that superb engine design.) The fact that they are corrosive is an issue. But one has to live with that with chemical engines in space. Space probes use hypergolic propellants. The Shuttle did. It is NOT a "nasty Russian rubbish design" thing.

What a load of tripe: the Soviets & Russians have been far less cavalier about the survivability of their systems than the Americans. You need to read your history more carefully. The Soyuz has always been developed to be survivable in all stages of use, unlike the Shuttle or Apollo, etc. Moreover the ability of the Soyuz to operate fully automatically or under remote control, without crew intervention permits an incapacitated crew to potentially survive. Unlike the Shuttle.

Incorrect: the Progress automated resupply ships can refuel the ISS. The Russian segment has the re-boost rockets on it that can be refuelled - this is the normal operation (NOT the international section). All of these can be remotely operated from the MKS in Moscow.

The Russians & International crews have had people up there for well over a year: consider the Mars 500 series of long-stays. There will be health risks, but nothing irrecoverable.

Ever heard of the Progress resupply ships that can dock automatically and refuel it, unlike the SpaceX junk.