* Posts by MachDiamond

8717 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2012

NASA's InSight doomed as Mars dust coats solar panels

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Insight?

"On the other hand, NASA do still do "try it and see" with helicopters :-)"

That helicopter had lots of testing in a vacuum chamber while weight balanced for Mars gravity. It was still very experimental, but they had very high confidence that they'd get some flights out of it. Another mission they've knocked out of the park.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Insight?

"NASA seems to have given up on the 'try it and see' approach"

The "faster, cheaper, more often" program did worse than spending the money (lots and lots) to get something perfected before launching it to Mars. The landers and rovers have all sorts of instruments from many organizations that they don't want one experimental thing to bork the whole mission if it doesn't work. A good in depth look at space science missions can be had from reading "Roving Mars" by Steve Squyers. He was the Principal Investigator for the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER, Spirit and Opportunity). I was lucky enough to meet him once at a conference when I worked at a space magazine.

Don't lock the datacenter door, said the boss. The builders need access and what could possibly go wrong?

MachDiamond Silver badge

And another thing....

Deviant Ollam has a great slide from one of his presentations where he shows a back/side door into a commercial building and points out it has a pretty good lock installed. All around the door are outside contractor's lock boxes that are really easy to bypass that contain the key to that door. Brian works as a physical security consultant and pen tester. His videos are epic and a great learning experience. <https://www.youtube.com/user/DeviantOllam/videos> Search on his nom de guerre as well as some of his talks are posted by others.

Alphabet reshuffles to meet ChatGPT threat

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Re: Google is AI

"Example : search the name of a movie and Google give you WIkipedia and imdb.com which take turns at being the first result then the second..Try it."

As a musician (ok, a drummer, but that's pretty close) I sometimes want to know who the musicians were on an album. There used to be liner notes for that sort of thing, but now if I search for that info all I get are places to buy the song, album or 150 mile walkie talkies.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Google search accurate?

I find that Google search results for the first page or three are complete spam. It's nothing but sponsored ads that are only vaguely related to the search. The use of regular expressions almost doesn't work anymore if you try to exclude results from someplace such as Amazon. They still haven't managed to filter out web sites coded to make believe they are local businesses when they might not even disclose their true address. If I'm hunting for shop that sells a certain thing in my area, I get results from companies hundreds of miles away that "serve" my local area. I'm really missing that yellow hunk of dead tree where I could look up local shops.

University students recruit AI to write essays for them. Now what?

MachDiamond Silver badge

I'd find it very useful

Given some insight into what a professor wants to see, I could outline a paper on a given topic I'm studying. If I could hand that outline off to an AI system to take those initial sentences and turn them into paragraphs, I'd have had so much more time to consume alcohol when I was younger. What would be worth paying extra for is the references. If the AI generated paper came back with footnotes and a bibliography, I would have been in heaven. I was in Uni many years ago before this whole newfangled intertubes thingy came along. Digging out the source material was a huge time component of any paper and meant hours in a library hoping the prof didn't remove any of the best materials.

Original work is much harder than editing and augmenting something already prepared. It could also suggest a better flow of supporting material from the outline provided than I might have been able to come up with given my sleep deprived and hungover condition. I expect to see much research going in the direction of using AI for a bulk of the verbiage so I don't have a problem with these paper writing bots. It will mean teachers and testing will have to adapt. Anybody getting a graduate degree better understand their material and be able to defend it or they will get skewered upon examination. For an undergraduate degree, it wouldn't be unfair to base a proctored test on a previously submitted work assignment. If you don't know the material, it will show. I will admit at this point that I did send away for some pre-written papers on a subject. The price depended on the topic and the length. I bought the cheapest ones I could since I didn't have much money and mainly needed to have a list of references and some sort of format. I knew better than to just re-type the things and hand them in. None of them would have matched my writing style to begin with. At least one of the papers had a huge WTF in it that would have been really bad had I not gone through it.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Fake test

"If it regurgitates a mixup of every previous paper on the topic - isn't that the defn of literary criticism?"

Plagiarism is copying off of one person. Research is copying off of a bunch of people, so it's research.

Too big to live, too loved to die: Big Tech's billion dollar curse of the free

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Can't be monetized?

"Amazon is burning billions on Alexa because voice assistants need massive infrastructure but can't be monetized."

GM is said to lose money on the Bolt EV. So why do they sell them? Carbon credits in the CARB states. With those vouchers, they can sell more high margin trucks and full size SUVs. While they lose money on the Bolt, they make even more someplace else.

The amount of information that those spy devices can collect by listening to a home is huge. With time and in conjunction with data from other Big Data companies, the files on people can be very detailed. Highly targeted ads during a stressful time for somebody can be very lucrative. If a family member has been diagnosed with a terminal disease, ads for estate planning, funeral services, etc can start being cycled in right at the time when the family is the most vulnerable. Knowing that kids in household are a certain age can make back-to-school promotional ads more appropriate. If a teenager is about to take their driving test, ads from companies that specialize in auto insurance for them might start to appear. It's just like magic.... or is it?

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Make at least sure you have your own domain

"nor will you ever get people to type that but that's what a QR code vcard is for"

Yeah, well, I don't scan QR codes, ever. Just think of something clever that people can remember like big @ bobthefinder. tld

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Your missing something huge

"It would be nice if you could silo the lighting into it's own operating division and then get some kind of tax credit for the losses...."

Companies do that sort of thing all of the time. A division or subsidiary in a high tax location makes very little or operates at a small loss and the parent company get located in some country that has very low taxes and will show the most profits. The subsidiary "buys" its inventory from the parent at a high comparative wholesale price so its Cost of Good Sold eats up what would otherwise be profits.

Any company that's looking at ROI on shelves vs lighting has accountants that need serious help. Of course you should always contain your costs, but there are better ways to look at it. An evenly and brightly lit store conveys a certain mood. It's also going to be perceived as cleaner and more colorful. Is that a loss or is that a component of marketing? I suggest it's the latter.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: I read this article to my son ...

"For those among us who own a house, we're entrusting the government to look after the ownership record. I'm thinking of leaving a few K of the mortgage outstanding as interest only, as the lender who is registered on the deed will have a lot more clout that I do if anything goes wrong with the Land Registry database."

It depends on what country you are in as to what might be the best tactic to use. You might want to pay off the home and shop around for the best deal on a loan/line of credit with the home as security instead of using a regular unsecured credit card. Just be very careful about setting limits on that account. If the title to a home is Mr Smith AND Mrs Smith rather than "OR", both parties have to sign off on a sale/transfer but that can add a bit more paperwork if one party passes away. It might even make sense to form a limited company that does nothing but own the house. That's not as unusual as it might seem. It's done all the time for exotic cars, boats and aircraft.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: I'm a typical Alexa user

"The only Alexa service we pay for is the advanced white noise app that we use for sleep and it is worth its weight ($2.99 a month) in gold."

Do you know you can get the same thing with a radio tuned to where there is no station? Cheap radios work best as you want one that doesn't automatically mute when it doesn't detect a signal.

I always go to sleep with an audiobook playing. A course on global economics is way better than Ambien.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: It's an on ramp

"Gmail is a very popular option with small businesses "

Your business doesn't have its own domain and website? I have over one hundred email addresses included with my hosting package and can get more for much less than $50/user/year. I also don't have Google filtering who can send me emails and who can't. I do use a spam filtering product, but I configure it so I can whitelist people if I need to. I periodically review what gets kicked into the spam can just in case it's being too aggressive.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Advetising is grossly overestimated

"I think there are very few offices in Denmark without a filter coffee maker installed. It’s one of the benefits that are expected."

Caffeine delivery is the best way to get the most work out of people. Somebody like Elon wants people doing quad shots every hour, but he's also auctioning off the machines.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Advetising is grossly overestimated

I make my own coffee at home for less than the change I can find in the sofa. It's so cheap it's not even metered.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Advetising is grossly overestimated

"Is there something special about retired people in New Jersey that I should know about?"

It could be the property tax is so high that if you are on a fixed income/pension you may have to sell your home or go broke much too quickly except selling a home with really high property tax bills is a tough thing to do.

MachDiamond Silver badge

"I agree that I wouldn't use a tiny company that only does email."

If all you need is email, it's a much simpler product to deliver so a small provider can deliver good service. Email is much easier to support than web sites. I have several of my own domains but I also have paid services through Proton. There are occasions where I don't want to give out too much information to somebody as would happen using email tied to my domains and free services are something I avoid.

MachDiamond Silver badge

" (I don't think my current ISP even offers them)"

Mine does but they don't have any instructions on how to configure your email client to access them. They also can't seem to send notices to any external email address no matter how you update your account or call customer service.

The cable company was supposed to send me a new terminal adaptor so I could take advantage of the higher speeds they offer (one size fits all). I clicked the boxes online and was disturbed to find they had no information conformation page regarding the "order" so I contacted CS on the phone so I could make sure they didn't send the package to my house, but use my mailing address instead. After 20 minutes with a brain dead little tart I was assured that it would go to my mailing address and she understood there are lots of porch pirates around where I live and I'm often away at short notice for work. When I logged in to pay my bill, I reviewed the email tab and saw that they sent the box to the wrong address, another message with cartoon on how to install the new TA and register it online, but no way to tell them it never arrived. The chat bot was not configured to understand any statement about not getting the shipment. Voice CS line, "your estimated wait time is 47 minutes due to an unusually heavy number of calls at this time". The former landline company (no more landlines in my town) is supposedly putting in fiber and I can't wait. Verizon is also rolling out 5G internet only service for much less.

MachDiamond Silver badge

"The difficulty with Telco provided email addresses is that you lose them when you change telephone or internet company."

Not always. Some will let you keep your email address for a small annual fee. A friend of mine just did that. The vast majority of his email goes to his own domain, but he had the cable internet address for friends and family. He's getting everybody transitioned and will delete the old email in May.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: paid for e-mail and own domain(s)

"I take regular backups of my mail"

All of my email is backed up automatically since it downloads to my computer at home and that backs up daily and then the mail is deleted from the server.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: paid for e-mail and own domain(s)

"Best hope the email provider doesn't go under. Now if you run your own email server..."

That's handled by registering your domain through somebody else. If your hosting provider goes away without notice, you can be back up with somebody else the same day in most cases. I suppose it could happen that your registrar ceases to exist, but I've never had that happen and I'm pretty sure you'd still be up and running with time to sort out which company will be your new registrar. I keep an off-line file of my web site backups, passwords and configurations so I can sign up with a new provider right away. They aren't that hard to find. Back in the dialup days, mine was just down the street and I could do backups at their location. These days I expect most people don't have any idea where the computer is their stuff is hosted on. I haven't for years.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Hope

"Lets formulate it as a mail dilemma pick to: gratis, long-lived, functional, you can't have all three."

The bad thing I see is the gratis part. People have been trained to believe that something for free has value. It's the same way that I'll see stuff being offered for free on Craigslist and it's obvious that the person is really looking for somebody to come by and haul everything away at no cost to the person posting the listing. Especially in cases where there is one or two things that may have some value but you have to take everything in the photos and most of it is landfill. Robert Heinlein tried to hammer home that "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" in several of his stories, but decades after his passing, that wisdom is still not believed.

Another thing to look for is something where you can't pay. There is no option to pay for the service while opting out of whatever ad program or big data slurping there may be. Hmmmmmm, his seems much like how animals are live-trapped. They could find food that doesn't trigger a trap, but it's set up to be so tempting. When something is free, you are probably getting much less than you've paid for. Negative value.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: GMail ensures users are logged into their Google account when they access the web

"They're using Gmail for identity more than anything else; combined with various forms of tracking they've got a lot more useful info than whatever is in someone's inbox."

I expect that for certain services such as mail, there are laws and regulations that must be adhered to or somebody like Google could be fined $10k or so if they get caught (again). If you sign up for an account used for other things, click the box that says you agree to the 37 pages of fine print, they can track you all over the place since you had just given them permission. Anybody that likes to read spy novels can come up with all sorts of ways what you do online can be used against you for a profit without working up a sweat.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: GMail ensures users are logged into their Google account when they access the web

"What pisses me off about Google is they insist on getting your phone number."

A phone number is the modern day serial number for people. Since we have been able to keep our phone numbers when we switch providers or addresses, it's become a great way for companies to inventory people. If there is no reason for somebody to have your phone number, be sure to have one in memory to hand out. One I use is a test number that just rings. The other number is the direct dial extension to a person at the Internal Revenue Service. Sometimes using a fake number you just make up won't work, but one that does work someplace that most people would not want to ring up is always good as it's a valid number and the call will go through.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: A couple of solutions, offered for free.

"Reverse-engineering replacement firmware is hard, and there aren't enough skilled and inclined people for each one."

A big part of that is none of it was written to be reused outside of the company. Nobody comes along later to write a straight-forward dev environment for those devices and the original company isn't going to release anything they developed internally. The walled-garden approach is ingrained. Nobody seems to be putting out an open source framework and selling the hardware for a profit. Simple bits of hardware are easy, but it's not cost effective for individuals to come up with the more capable devices and will opt to buy them and content themselves with tweaking the code. I've had lots of projects that get scrapped when I find out how much cheaper it will be to buy and modify the hardware.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: A couple of solutions, offered for free.

"I'd much rather go back to the days when I don't need 5 damn devices."

I don't and do just fine. I don't even "do" text. If somebody doesn't feel it's worthwhile to make a voice call, it's likely a waste of my time. If they need to send information to me, I ask them to use email and let me know I have mail if there is a time constraint. My biggest issue is that Text takes too much time and I can't be doing anything else. What would be a 5 minute voice call becomes a 30 minute back and forth. As soon as I plunge my hands back in the dishwater, they'll send me another text. I do have an assortment of computers in my office, but I count the whole of the office as one device. My tablet remote controls my DSLR and Drone, that's it other than my photo portfolio.

I've had Twitter, I've used Text, I've picked up the phone was past business hours. At a point where I saw I was getting less and less done, I figured out that being so connected was eating up all of my time. When I comment here, it a nice break and I can do it when I have some time. Nobody is demanding a response from me at 11pm when I'm rolling into bed. At least not in a way that I'm going to notice.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: A couple of solutions, offered for free.

"The problem is, it's not the 90s and everyone doesn't just have one computer on their desk anymore."

Convenience is the opposite of security. In the US, once you have opened a piece of mail (physical or digital), it can be reviewed by law enforcement through a subpoena and the contents used against you. Do you still want all of your mail on a server whose operator will hand over the contents of you mail box if any TLA just says "please"?

IMAP is a better substitute and you want to make sure that you can delete mail from you server anytime you like with no remaining copies sitting anywhere. Yeah, I know, that's really hard to know for sure, but you can expect that companies such as Google are going to hang on to everything they handle "just in case you delete something on accident".

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Serves Google right

"I do not want to risk handing a working payment card to Google Play."

I'd much rather send the money directly to the author and download the app from their web site. I only have a couple of apps on my phone and I did send money by post to the author of one after I had used alternative means to get the program. Got a nice email back since I sent 1.5x the amount and included a complimentary note on how well it works for me. Most apps are so cheap that paying 2x is still only a tenner. I'd rather send cash than expose a digital source of funds if I can.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Serves Google right

"Perhaps Apple did a clever thing deciding that the free forever emails weren’t after all. Before the problem grew."

I was mad when Apple dropped the free accounts. I had f__kmicrosoft@mac.com. I didn't use it much, but it made people laugh when I gave it to them and it was easy to remember. (I used all of the letters, btw)

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Serves Google right

"I posted as AC to admit I had a Hotmail account!"

You know that you are, at least, getting less than you paid for. I expect that you don't realize how much those free services wind up costing you.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Serves Google right

"I think that Google sucks but on the other hand, I have not received any malware email via gmail "

If a few spam emails aren't leaking through, you may have a problem. I've had issues with email going to a gmail account bouncing back at me due to Google not liking me that day. I wind up having to call the person I was trying to email to see if they have another account I can use instead. If you are using a gmail account professionally, why? It not only looks bad, you have no control over it. You own domain/website/hosting account is not that expensive and if you go with the right host, you can have all sorts of backend control options. I recommend staying away from Wix, Squarespace and godaddy. If you need to have a lot of handholding, hire somebody to maintain your online stuff.

Beijing needs the ability to 'destroy' Starlink, say Chinese researchers

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: As much as I hate to admit it..

"When you're talking about aerial combat you don't even need the ground stations, you just use the mesh between the satellites as a kind of updated version of MANET."

The birds with sat to sat linking are the V2 models that need Starship to lift due to size. There's still that little issue of Starship not being a functional rocket yet much less in any configuration useful for deploying satellites. It also move bandwidth bottlenecks rather than eliminating them. While it may be possible for the network to reconfigure when a ground station is lost, it will mean that bandwidth will suffer. That will mean there will be a need to prioritize traffic in real time and automatically. Text messages are the smallest and easiest to shut around and high-def video the most intensive. This is all predicated on the Starlink system being designed for military use rather than strictly commercial or with military needs able to be added on whenever somebody will pay for them.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: After an EMP attack

"Bins, pen and paper (plus Semaphore flags) is about all that is left that will work."

Those may still work, but there won't be anybody around to operate them. To generate an EMP sufficiently strong and widespread to knock out electronics is going to come from the detonation of a large nuclear bomb. If those start being used for whatever reason, game over. All of the hype surrounding EMP as some sort of easily deployeable weapon is from people that will look at you quizzically if you use phrases such as "inverse square law". The old ignition systems in car would wreak havoc on AM radio reception, but a radio with its antenna a few meters away can be fine.

San Francisco investigates Hotel Twitter, Musk might pack up and leave

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Regeneration?

"That is something that Tesla is most certainly under contract and is why Elon never talks about the why he really left California"

The city of Austin gave Elon $65mn in tax abatements and other inducements to build a factory there. That's public information as the city can't keep that secret. Elon moved HQ as part of a pissing match when he was told he needed to shut down just like everybody else during the pandemic. He's on record as dismissing Covid and then claiming it was over when he said it was and many other statements in that vein via Twitter. California is also very pro-employee and with all of the lawsuits being brought against Tesla for harassment that he couldn't have dismissed or handled via arbitration he needed to start moving before one of those cases wound up going against him in a very major way. I'm really surprised that the Fremont assembly plant hasn't be moved yet. It never made sense to start with other than it being originally a car plant and he may have picked it up very cheaply. The area is on the edge of Silicon Valley and a very expensive place to operate a business. Many times so for a really large operation.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: I call contrived

"Private company, no stock, no options"

A private corporation still has stock. In the case of Twitter, Elon isn't the sole owner and ownership is divided up by the number of stocks each shareholder has. What is highly unlikely for some time is for the company to be publicly listed on a stock exchange again which is where an employee can make big money for any stock they've been awarded. Shares in privately held companies can often come with covenants regarding their sale. Being given shares might be more of a gesture than anything meaningful.

Bill Gates' nuclear power plant stalled by Russian fuel holdup

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: :looks at watch:

"I would expect any improvements in solar panel efficiency or turbine shape or whatnot could be phased in more-or-less with scheduled maintenance/renewal. "

There just isn't enough theoretical improvements left that will make wind and solar drop in replacements for baseline power generation. All of the storage options thus far are too expensive, complicated or dangerous (some are all of that).

The talk thus far in government circles has been on the best hammering techniques to pound the square peg into a round hole. Very little to no discussion has been entertained about finding the appropriate square hole. Cleanly produced energy is a good thing and is useful if it used according to the restrictions that come with it. If it can reduce the energy used by burning fossil fuels, all the better. The solar system I'm working on at home won't have me disconnecting from the grid but rather being used to power the most common usages I have such as running a freezer, an evaporative cooler and putting heat in the house on a winter day. The ROI to be totally off-grid won't pay back for me in the years I likely have left.

As Professor Bernardo De La Paz famously said "When confronted by a problem you don't understand, do the part you do understand and look at it again". Getting people to the moon was a goal, but there were a whole bunch of intermediate steps in getting there. It would have made no sense to have a program to go from zero rockets (discounting the Chinese gunpowder rockets) to walking on the moon in one go before doing something like Sputnik and then suborbital manned rockets followed by more increasing difficult missions to work out how to do all of the tasks the moon flights required.

What intermittent processes can we do with wind and solar? That can be looked at while at the same time we can be looking at improving nuclear power to make it more safe, less expensive and even more reliable. It's not one or the other, nor should it be.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: "Mankind has NEVER created a container that doesn't leak after a few years. EVER."

"Which makes Yucca Mountain with a life expectancy of 10 000 years sound exceptionally bat-s**t crazy, does it not?"

On one hand, yes. On the other, the US needs a secure long term storage facility for spent fuel. If Yucca mountain only lasts for 1,000 years, that's still better than rows of casks sat out next to plants that will be decommissioned in 40 or so years from their start up date. What needs to happen along with a good storage facility is vigorous work put in to find a way to burn down the spent fuel in a way that reduces the dangers of having it stored in containers that could start leaking for a reason not yet understood in the same way that polar expeditions found happens through using Tin to seal up metal containers. Perhaps it would make sense to have a research facility near to Yucca mountain. In exchange for an advanced degree in nuclear physics, a term of service could be required in lieu of repayment of student loans or the jobs would pay sufficiently well if the person had those loan payments debited directly from their pay.

Server broke because it was invisibly designed to break

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Faulty chassis intrusion switch = 3 new floppy drives, 2 new motherboards and a RAID riser.

"So finally on day 4 a technican arrives with a new switch for the front door of the server."

This is the downside of field service. There's no way to have every part that might be needed even if the technician was driving an HGV. My recommendation would be if the first trip doesn't fix the problem, the device should probably go back to a depot for repair if possible where there are parts, a full set of manuals, more people that may know about a recurring fault and all of the test equipment that may be needed.

Management that's any good will realize that having spares for critical infrastructure is important even if it eats into their bonus fund. The likelihood of something going wrong completely draining that bonus fund is a good indicator or the depth needed for backups.

When the cable internet goes Tango Uniform in my town, at least 3/4 of the businesses can only take cash (for as long as cash is still left). A sizable enough population in the area are completely unemployable and enjoy sponsorship by the State so all of their shopping is done on plastic (expect for the weed store, which can only take cash so far). If the internet were down for several days, people would starve or have to do without energy drinks, snacks and booze. I'm surprised that at least some stores don't have some sort of backup even if it is slow.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: If you have one, you have none

"I just read an article about companies planning to run small pilotless cargo aeroplanes - but they're not allowed to yet."

And never should be allowed.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: A service provider that doesn't bill because their attempted fixes failed?

"All computer logic is built from individual components, including the core memory."

They had the guts from a US space shuttle?

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: A service provider that doesn't bill because their attempted fixes failed?

"What if that one employee goes off ill, or has a holiday?"

What if the company you chose goes out of business, burns down or has a data breach? I'd never have only one person that could do the job, but it might be just one that does do the job on a regular basis. I gave an example of where I was outsourcing and why. I do not forget the total cost of having an employee and am not naive enough to think that my only cost for them is their wages. What YOU might be missing is that there are substantial risks when you outsource that you can't control. That other company may only have one person assigned to do the task for your company that can go off sick, on holiday or get hit by a bus. Did they cross-train anybody to step in? Did that employee move to another company where you know neither who the employee was or the company they went to along with your proprietary information? As I had a manufacturing company for 17 years, losing an employee also meant losing a big chunk of training and being able to get feedback on our processes. An outside company could change how something is done to save time without realizing that the change makes a big hit on quality. I had one soldered part that required a very specific high-temp solder. If that got swapped out for a more common type, I'd have had thousands of products coming back under warranty. The in-house staff didn't have access to any other type of solder on that line and I could monitor that. Who knows if that outsourcing company is doing the same thing.

$69b Activision deal totally helps gamers and saves them money, says Microsoft

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Ministry of Determining Which Companies are Too Big will be infiltrated with paid stooges

"Is the Ministry of Determining Which Companies are Too Big to Fail infiltrated with paid stooges, or is it just natural symbiosis / self-preservation that makes them act?"

Companies that are too big to fail seem to me as more of a religion. It's a concept that doesn't get rigorously tested and the reasoning seems to be supported by a very thin bit of scaffold. Those that decide which companies can't fail are the same group that often have extensive investment portfolios containing those companies.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: "$69B Activision deal totally helps " . . . Microsoft

"Keep in mind that Activision is already far, far up Shit Creek, and if you ever again want to see them release another game (of sufficient quality to be taken seriously), they've got to be taken over by someone."

They may just need to get the right person(s) in to lead the dev teams. They should have plenty of people that know how to code games and artists that can skin things up a treat if they are given a theme or world description. Companies that have been in the business for a long time will also have files full of components to draw from.

LastPass admits attackers have a copy of customers’ password vaults

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Physical virtual security

I saw a news report last night where a group of women stole a safe from a grocery store. A couple of them distracted the clerk while two others loaded the safe into a trolly, covered it with blankets and shawls and trundled out with it. They weren't going to bother to open the safe on-site, but get it someplace else where they could apply whatever tools they liked without attracting much attention. The manager claims the safe had about $9,000 in it. Not that great of a haul for all of the risk and being split between at least 5 people.

FCC calls for mega $300 million fine for massive US robocall campaign

MachDiamond Silver badge

Any leads on a good chat bot?

I'd love to have a chat bot with a passable voice that could keep a telemarketer going for a bit. Something that can be scripted so when it hears a phrase such as "car warranty" it can go into a routine that runs them a merry chase having them explain where to find the VIN number on the registration and finally give them one you've programmed in (from a police car) and responding to questions with random semi-personal inquiries such as if the person is married or has children. The weather is always a good topic and good for a couple of minutes of wasted time while sounds of looking through file drawers and rustling paper is in the background to simulate a search for a piece of information.

Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech

MachDiamond Silver badge

"Douglas Adams had already pointed out decades earlier what the obvious shortcoming of this would be "

That's just another reason why we should have been working on cloning before Douglas passed away. He could grind through the glossy concepts and see their fatal flaws so easily that we really could have used a few dozen more of him around.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Does *anyone* shop online without doing price comparisons? Ever?

I rarely do price comparisons. Spending a half hour to save $.60 is stupid. A big additional problem can be the item is on the other side of the country. For the US, that can be a much bigger issue. Is it worth waiting an extra few days to get the item to save the change? I also don't shop at all through Amazon. If I buy something on eBay that is drop shipped from Amazon, that seller gets a ding since they likely didn't mention that in their listing.

MachDiamond Silver badge
Coat

Re: But the data

"5 minutes with ADB and Bixby, along with all the other Samsung bloatware is a distant memory...."

Apple Desktop Bus?

Yeah, I'm old.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Dead silence

" but they'll not be coming from Big Tech since they're not monetizable in any significant way."

Really? Rent an imagination for an afternoon and ponder. Some good spy novels could give you ideas too. There's one non-fiction book I like titled "Spy Catcher" from one of the original MI-5 tech staff Peter Wright. There's more ways than just charging somebody a monthly fee to monetize something.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: My neighbour's got one

""Alexa, order 300 pairs of incontinence pants""

Have a sense of humor and order 300 glow-in-the-dark french tickler condoms. Flavored or unflavored is up to you.