Posts by MachDiamond

Those screws on the Apple Watch Ultra are a red herring

"or limited to service personnel."

If I'm out and about and find I need a new battery in my watch (analog), I'm not above having somebody do it for me at the mall. They have the right tools so they don't leave marks and do it so often that it takes a couple of minutes. They also likely have the correct battery on hand so I don't have to first take the watch apart and then visit several shops to find the correct battery of a good quality. Watch batteries are not a place to be using Won Hung Lo cells that tend to leak after a couple of weeks. Spend the extra 50p for the name brand.

Re: Muppets

"I'm guessing that they've never taken anything apart with 100m rating before"

What's the point of having that sort of depth rating. Do these watches even function underwater? A sport scuba diver is never going anywhere near 100m and the temp that deep means a commercial diver is going to be wearing gloves and typically a dry suit. 10m meter is often more than suitable and 33m about as premium as any normal (non-commercial diver) would need. That covers splashes and forgetting the watch just as you might be jumping into a pool or spa. If you lose the watch in 100m of water, just kiss it goodbye.

Re: Priorities

"The battery is typically the first component to fail, and when that happens they want you to buy a new watch, not replace the battery."

Since you can get an average of 24 months of reliable usage from those batteries (cells, really), Divide the cost of the watch by 24 and see how much you are renting that watch for each month. Now, wouldn't it make more sense to take that money and add it to your house/car/credit card payment rather than just increasing the balance on that credit card?

Want to sneak a RAT into Windows? Buy Quantum Builder on the dark web

Re: Super. This "cmstp.exe" thing looks way too dangerous to have on users systems

"since we know that most of us are going to click on: https://sexy.bunny/love-me"

What I've been getting a bunch of lately are invoices or receipts for goods ordered that have a link disguised and labeled as a .pdf copy. All of them have been very poorly done, but I worry that somebody more sophisticated could send one of those to my mom masquerading as being from a local store she might shop at. I never have a receipt emailed to me as can be an option these days mainly because I don't hand shops my email address. Lots of people do, though. If my mom did that and then gets a phishing letter, she might click the link.

Something that needs to be taught and taught and driven home by electroshock therapy is never to click links in an email. If a company sends a legitimate notice, you should not use their link but log into your account directly with a URL you know is correct. A problem I notice is that some companies make it impossible to find that notice if you don't use the link rather than it being on top if you log in.

City isn't keen on 5,000 erratic, traffic-jam-causing GM robo-cars on its streets

Re: Isn't it their own damn fault

" It probably would've helped in all *these* cases where the failure mode was "car didn't know what to do and just shut itself down in a travel lane"."

Unless the car just came to a screeching halt and the driver behind was a bit too close. A car shutting itself down if it gets confused might solve one issue, but generate several more. I don't see this as being better.

Re: what exactly is the point?

"They can't even be bothered to change gears manually."

That would mean not having any hands on the wheel or needing to find a place for my beer.

Flippancy aside, an automatic transmission can do a better job with day to day driving. I like being able to have a snack or non-alcoholic drink while driving and it's easier if I'm not having to shift. Some days it's the only way I can get lunch down my neck. For the first couple of decades of driving, all of my cars had a manual transmission. It is a good skill to know as there might be a time when you need to drive one even if you can't drive it well to be able to at least not jerk and stall can be good enough.

SF is an acid test

Any older big city is a master's level test for an autonomous car. Why does GM want to do their testing there instead of someplace like Alliance, Nebraska? The cars need to be able to handle the mundane flawlessly before they're tasked with figuring out too narrow roads laid out before cars were commonplace, winding roads on hills, one way streets, never ending road closures, double parked delivery vans and all of the other things in a target rich downtown on a weekday.

My suggestion is that all autonomous cars must be certified by an independent testing agency on a road course that contains many hazards found in a city. The DARPA Urban Challenge was held on a closed down military base which can be a good reuse of those facilities. They have residential zones, a shopping center and warehouses and all of it can be fitted with all manner of problems for an EV to solve. Important too is that the obstacles can be changed around so makers aren't building out their test vehicle specially to pass the test. Being closed to the public other than for some competition weekends, nobody is going to be harmed if the car has a brain fart and does something really stupid.

A company I was with won a NASA prize by building a rocket tailored to the contest. Like Scrapheap Challenge builds, it wasn't pretty, but it did the job. Had there been more and random things that could have been thrown at us, we would have needed to build a more complete rocket lander and been prepared to adapt at the last minute. I suppose the difference is that rockets aren't built to be general purpose vehicles and get designed with a specific mission in mind.

Re: Isn't it their own damn fault

"How about this... all self-driving cars must have a safety driver."

It doesn't help. There was a fatal accident in Arizona where the car didn't see somebody crossing the road at night and the "safety driver" was fiddling with their phone. If there has to be a safety driver, it would be better to just have them driving the car in the first place.

Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

Re: So many reasons

"A microcontroller is used more often than is strictly necessary, in my view (ymmv) and I blame the Universities for that."

The Uni's don't teach K.I.S.S. A friend of mine went back to school to take some classes in DSP. On one test the teacher wanted a high pass filter as part of the spec. It was a trick problem. There wasn't enough horse power in the chip to implement that filter at the frequency demanded. My friend's background was in analog so he knew the easiest thing to do was put a capacitor on the front end. Job done, 6dB/oct of high pass in one part and a very simple program to implement the rest of the problem. He was the only one that got it right. Everybody else had come from a digital course track and didn't remember any of the classes in analog filters.

I am guilty of reaching for a microcontroller too often. Since I'm building stuff that isn't going into mass production, I am not pinching pennies and sometimes I don't have all of the discrete components to hand that I need. They are in a box somewhere in the garage. The Arduino stuff is on a shelf next to my work bench. Yeah, I'm 'ing lazy.

Re: It's the economy, stupid

"My son is about to go off to uni to do a Mech Eng degree. If he doesn't get his dream job in F1 when he graduates, I'll be pointing him in the direction of some other non-engineering sector. "

He may want to look outside of the classic places one might work after getting an engineering degree. At one point I was looking into a job with the USGS. Mostly you'd think they'd be a gang of geologists that hit rocks with hammers all day, but they have departments that design, develop and deploy all manner of measuring devices. The trick for a job like that might be a related degree to go with the engineering. An old roommate got tired of being a nurse and while off in another country with her boyfriend where she wasn't allowed to work, she got a student visa and spend time getting her MBA. The combination of the nursing and business degrees landed her a bunch of sweet jobs in the medical industry where most of the business people are at a complete loss on how to pronounce medical terms and understand how the products they make are used. A couple of languages tacked on won't go amiss.

Girls Who Code books 'banned' in some US classrooms

Re: One day they will look at their daughters killed by the Moral Police...

"The way I see it is that without some higher authority you have to face the prospect that by almost pure chance the key requirements for life just happened to occur on this small rock and that through a long and not exactly sensible set of mutations it resulted in humans. "

If you believe there may be something to panspermia that isn't just another layer of turtles, you can see that evolution didn't have to be a chance event confined to Earth. It can take away the argument of "pure chance". Life may also be inevitable in our universe given a certain environment that's conducive to life as we know it. If any sort of life or former life can be found on Mars or in other places of our solar system, the basis of that life will tell us a lot about how unique life on Earth might be. Dr Chris McKay at NASA Ames has done some very interesting work on the subject.

Re: One day they will look at their daughters killed by the Moral Police...

Sanitary products should be zero-rated. They aren't really a choice unless one will willing go back to how it was handled in the dark ages. Sports bras? That's more of a choice. When I played hockey, I found it prudent to wear an extra bit of protection and had to pay for it. I didn't "have" to play hockey. While I was required to participate in physical education in school, there was no requirement that I purchase any specialized gear. I expect that if a girl were to ask to do a different activity due to it being painful to do as asked, any decent teacher should find some sort of accommodation. It's also not like the VAT is the difference for a one time purchase (or two). It's not doubling the price (yet).

Re: Mission creep

'Stick to your mission and don't let it be associated with the hot button causes du jour."

I have to agree. One of my buttons these days is the "people of color" tag on things. Of course saying or writing "colored people" would be massively racist but reordering the words makes it all good. Another think that steams me is spinning something "for the children" or "low income". I find some of the arguments that something is "disproportionately affecting" low income households and "people of color". Yeah, it sucks to be poor. Most of us know that. To allude that being poor and non-caucasian leads to stupidity is more racist than a really racist thing.

I think it's an excellent idea to get and keep girls interested in STEM. I think it's pointless to take it further and add a classification based on melanin concentrations. It's better to just leave it at girls and women and go from there. I'd hate to see an organization such as Sally Ride Science make any distinction between any of the girls in their programs to fulfill some sort of deep seated and misplaced guilt.

California to phase out gas furnaces, water heaters by 2030

Re: Special CA kit

"Both our water heaters are relatively new, but our furnace is aged, at least 30 years old. I guess we'll be replacing it right before the ban. I already have a rediculous PG&E monthly bill over $300, and that's with our roof covered with solar"

It might be worth an out of state trip to pick up something when needed. Why the large electric bill? Something isn't right. I had a neighbor that got fed up with high cooling bills and finally hired a company to bulk up the insulation in his attic, whey they had a look to see what would be needed, they found that there was no insulation to begin with. This friend bought the house new and never had a reason to look in the attic crawl space. Some building inspector got paid off or was very incompetent to miss that one. Adding insulation made a huge difference. It did turn out there was insulation in the exterior walls, but they made sure after finding nothing in the attic. They had just assumed there would be some as it's mandatory.

Re: Trying the heat pumps now but missing the elephant the room

"Urban public transportation averages 3 to 25 MPH if you need to transfer and yet it's almost as expensive as a taxi."

A problem with a lot of pubic transportation is it isn't built where it's best to build, but where it's easiest to condemn the land. Too much of it in the US doesn't connect up so you can't securely park your car or bike at a local hub and get between a trolley, train and airport. Forget busses. They often have the slowest average speed so anything other than a trip that only a few stops it going to be too long. The bus schedules also don't line up with the train schedules where I am making them useless. I can't get a bus from my city to catch the first commuter train down the highway from me. If I don't get the first train when I go to visit my mom, I'd have to wait at the transfer point where I need to change trains an extra hour and a half. The second to last return train would leave me waiting for the bus to get home an hour and a half. There is also no way to plan an overnight trip as the commuter station is in a really bad part of town and the parking lot deserted at night.

The people planning these things not only drive everywhere, they're given a government car and gas card to do all of that driving. Whatever design inputs they are using aren't something they have to live with or use.

Re: More economic suicide to solve and imaginary problem

"Meanwhile, India and China's new emissions will offset any CO2 "savings" by many, many multiples."

That's ok because those countries have mostly been exempted by the green treaties along with most of Africa. You'd think that the issue was one of first world rape of the third world reparations rather than a global problem that needs to be addressed or the emission limits would be applied universally.

The developing countries could do much better since they aren't having to replace and modify existing infrastructure. Anywhere a region is starting mostly from scratch is a good place to use the most up to date and efficient technology.

Re: Scrubbers for fireplaces?

"You KNOW that there will be people driving their SUVs and pickup trucks to Nevada and Arizona to get a propane grill and plenty of fuel for it, right? Or, sending someone ELSE to do it."

There would be a really big problem if the sale of propane was eliminated. Many homes, especially mobile homes, use propane for heating and cooking. There isn't an easy or cost effective way to convert them to pure electric. A whole trailer park would need to be ripped up to be able to upgrade the electrical distribution and the homes themselves would need major work. Propane is also the fuel of choice for RV's and food trucks.

People might do the maintenance to keep their BBQ's working rather than just using them until they rot with no cleaning or repairs ever. Where I am, I can find a used BBQ any day of the week either cheap of free right now. When I take stuff to the waste depot, there are often plenty of unloved BBQ's waiting to be recycled. I alway look to see if there is one like mine so I can nick any parts I need. Unfortunately, it's not allowed to take anything away once it's at the waste station/dump. That's a big issue I'd like to see changed.

I have a good customer that helps older people move and conducts auctions and sales of their stuff they don't want or need anymore. He winds up with loads of eWaste that he has to get rid of and gives me a first look to see if there is anything I can use. I just cleaned up a good enough PC that turned out to be from the actor that played Ferris Bueller's dad in the movie. Funny what you come across. Maybe it's a good thing it was me that got it. I erased all of the drives and kept any data that may have been rather personal from getting out. The only thing that was really wrong was the video card packed it in. I'm guessing that's why it was binned. The computer works great as my workbench machine and I donated my old one to the local school freshly blessed with clean drive, os installation and OpenOffice so it's ready for a student whose family might not be able to afford one. Always be paying it forward.

"We have decide to equip our place with enough solar to general ~8000 kwh per year and two Tesla Powerwall batteries."

F Tesla. Look at the offerings from Bosch, Siemens, LG, BYD and ask some specialty electricians about other ala carte systems that will cost less and fit your needs much better. Tesla seems to have the prettiest box, but it's the tops for price and mediocre for performance. Get a good independent audit first too. A monthly total is useless to calculate a system. Keep in mind that grid power is a good value when balanced against the ROI of many PV systems. If your solar system is good enough during an outage if you economize a bit, that could save a bunch of money rather than building out something that will run everything all of the time.

Re: Don't blame us for this.

"There is no plan to "fix" the grid by 2030. There are no provisions in these rules to delay or cancel them if the grid isn't ready by then"

It's private companies that hold the monopolies so it those companies that have to do the upgrading. If they find it better to take their money and invest in stocks and bonds to have a better return for their shareholders (the C-level execs), they'll do that instead of adding or upgrading capability. That's problem one. The State should be setting regulations that put limits on executive compensation and re-investment as part of needing to maintain an effective monopoly since it makes zero sense to have several power companies stringing lines all over the place.

"Instead of holding them to task and either taking over the state power grid when they defaulted or forcing them to address the issues, he looks the other way."

The State was a contributor to PG&E having to declare bankruptcy. If the State won't allow the companies to clear trees and brush away from their distribution lines as far back as they feel is necessary, the State has to take part of the blame for fires. Instead, we now have those companies shutting the lines down when there are high winds causing blackouts so they can manage their risk.

I do not want the government to take over the utilities. I couldn't think of a faster way to wind up with the highest priced power in the world with a reliability on par with small African nations. California has lots of work to do filling pot holes and upgrading bridges to add another giant lot of people to the underwater State pension program. The Governor just saw it necessary to veto a law providing kindergarten universally across the state due to cost. Funny though, there is money to hand out to those in the country informally for food, housing, healthcare and other services. You'd think that something as core as education would be first and foremost. Apparently not. Perhaps it's because 5 year olds don't have the vote (yet).

Re: Ridiculous

"but, they've also turned down geothermal "

There are ventures at the Salton Sea to extract Lithium and use geothermal power for the processes. It's nice to see that they are thinking about In-Situ-Resource-Utilization and going from Lithium bearing ores/solutions/etc to Lithium metal or other in-demand form without having to spend all sorts of money moving it all long distance each time another process needs to be applied.

Are they cranking down the geo-thermal plants at the Salton Sea? How about the ones in Geyser, CA and there is a geo-thermal installation on the China Lake Naval Weapons Station. I think there may be some more and certainly a few more places that would be good candidates if companies were allowed to place infrastructure at them. I doubt that much impact will be made cooling down the edge of the Ring of Fire.

Tidal and wave power extraction hasn't been cracked yet. It can be done but the bits don't survive in the ocean long enough for a ROI. They are also hard to see so a hazard to boats and can be a source of people going to prison for life if there is any interaction with designated endangered species.

Re: Wishful thinking

"Our rural backwater doesn't have a gas pipeline so all our furnaces are electric"

When I was young my dad's house had electric heat and about the only time it was used was when it was a choice between using it and death. The pot belly stove was the main heat source in the winter and good siting and a few open windows in the summer was the cooling. Amazing what can be done with some space and a dozen trees.

Re: Wishful thinking

Either it can be EV's OR electric furnaces but not both at the same time. As pointed out, homes that were built with gas as part of the energy input often don't have a very large incoming power line. Also keep in mind that 100A at US voltage is half the power of the same current in the UK. Not only will homes need to be refitted with a new panel and circuit breakers, and they aren't often as flexible as in other places being built-in rather than bolted to a panel, the power lines need to be replaced all the way back to the main sub-stations. All of the transformers on the poles will need to be upgraded. It's a huge undertaking and passing laws and fining people won't help. The US does produce gas domestically. It's not like they have to worry about a foreign leader closing the valve as has happened elsewhere.

I don't see any problem with new construction having the option for both. It's more expensive to install and provision new homes with a 200A or bigger main panel, but it's not discounting that gas is a good choice in many places. California has a mandate that new homes come with solar panels, but the requirement is pitiful and they didn't go as far as requiring that homes are sited on their lots and the roofs laid-out to be suitable for solar. Many new homes have a few panels that get a little bit of sun for half of the day making the installation 'ing worthless. I count myself lucky that the house I wound up buying is very good for adding PV panels and I'll put them on after I have saved the money and had the roof replaced first.

Re: Wishful thinking

"If you replaced that electric furnace with a heat pump you'd save a lot of energy. "

Provided there is something that will be a drop in replacement and won't need a load of adapting to make it sit in the same closet and push air through the same ducts. It also discounts the energy embodied in the heating unit being replaced going off to land fill if it still has life in it.

Grab – Asia's Uber – knows customers and drivers so well it can vet them for loans

Bronze handcuffs

I immediately heard the lyric “Saint Peter, don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store.”

I can envision how the company could put those people in handcuffs with a loan bigger than they can honestly afford, but not so big that they won't knock themselves out trying to pay back. There could also be a clause that if they leave the company or reduce their hours, the loan for that scooter with all of the accessories is due immediately or at an accelerated rate. They wouldn't be able to take that scooter to another job where they might make more money while enjoying a pretty good rate on the loan.

The whole setup is frightening. It's also nothing new.

Meta busts first Chinese campaign prodding US midterms

Geofencing?

If Netflix can keep you from accessing your account when you are traveling, why couldn't Zuck exclude comments and posts in political forums from outside the country they apply to. Yes, you could be able to read what's going on, but you'd hit a road block if you tried to post something from an account set up with a different locale. Those wishing to get into political debate will first need to do some sort of verification as a way to prevent rouge user accounts that are made to circumvent the rules.

Political ads would have to be purchased from a pre-authorized and vetted source with funds from a bank account not held in the name of a foreign entity. Sure, there are ways around some of this, but at least the most obvious and low-tech avenues are closed. More sophisticated meddling might be easier to track to its source.

Intel's 13th-gen CPUs are hot, hungry, loaded with cores

Re: i7... 253W TDP... nuts.

"In an office environment? At a certain point you have to think of your HVAC system."

During the winter nobody will be plugging in an electric heater they've brought in.

On demand options

Most of the time what I'm doing is not compute intensive, but from time to time I need some iron to get things done. This has led me to use a laptop for doing things like commenting on El Reg or maintaining a database and only firing up my loaded cheese grater (small holes) when I need it. If I could have one machine where I can tell it to idle a certain number of processors or cores, I'd be happy. I mean really idle them so until I expressly ask for them to be on, they aren't. Keeping things sync'd is a pain. Sure, there's options to sync things online, but very few if you want to keep the data in-house. I view anything cloudy with trepidation and avoid it wherever possible. I don't want to receive visitors in dark suits that want to quiz me about a phone number in my contacts or something on my calendar that I abbreviated in a way that raises flags. I have had calendar entries for things like rallies and protests not because I'd go, but because I want to remind myself to stay the hell away from that area that day. Since I do field service work, I want to avoid getting stuck in traffic jams or unruly mobs protesting shortages of toilet paper or something stupid.

Samsung sued for gobbling up too much personal info that miscreants then stole

Jail time

Until jail/prison time is on the menu for C-level executives, mismanaging PII isn't a big deal. They pay a fine and mark it down as a cost of doing business. They've likely made a much bigger pile already will continue to do in the future from maintaining that list. Now, if lead monkeys were given a time-out and there was the possibility of company ending fines in the cases of the most gross negligence, perhaps data security would be more of a priority.

I know people that have gone through several levels of hell after their data had been leaked by a company they didn't have any direct business with. It's the nightmare that just keeps on giving and can take several years to get mostly cleared up although the lingering after affects carry on for much longer. Credit gets wrecked, retirement/bank accounts might be reinstated but not the interest they would have made, good stock buys negated and all sorts of other things that cost a person. There are so many layers of government that never seem to talk to each other, getting something cleaned up in one place can be unstuck again when another agency doesn't get the memo about the breach and it's back to fixing everything up again. Seeing it from the outside, I have to wonder if it would just be better to move to a new country and create a brand new identity than to try and fix up yours.

LinkedIn study suggests it's not your best pals who will help get you that next job

I'm definitely an anomoly

Yes, I'm on LinkedIn for a certain value of "on". The only people I'm connected with are those that I've worked or gone to school with and like. I don't think I've added to the list for 3-4 years. Since I'm self-employed now, I find nothing to my advantage in connecting with my clients. I already communicate with them often enough. It's not bad for people to be able to find me if we've lost touch over the years and our contact information has changed.

Recruiter spam goes right in the bin. I just received another completely unsuitable job offer today doing a job I'd never want to do again for a company that I don't think is going to be around long term. I have no inclination to sell my home and move across the country to an extremely high cost of living area for a job that pays peanuts.

Musk says Starlink will ask for exemption to US sanctions on Iran

Re: Re-Wording Dept

"Wait... Julian Assange chose a life in Russia?"

No, of course not, but if he's bundled off to the US and made to stand trial, he's also likely to not be able to put forward a defense due to "national security" issues even though the cat is well and truly out of the bag. They want to put him on trial very publicly, not give him a fair shake.

Datacenter migration plan missed one vital detail: The leaky roof

Re: Coat Room

"Because it was a fire door?"

It might be hard to close if is has a bunch of coats hooked on the back of it.

Re: Architect Smartitect

"Replace the 2 two-stall bathrooms (one men's, one women's, each with required sight-blocking jog) with 5 one-person unisex bathrooms (which, being one-person, don't need the jog.) Put them right outside the largest room, which will be used for meetings and conferences."

This is a place where the regs get to be a problem. There are far more men in fire brigades than women. There might only be one woman at a station so an extra stall is a waste. If there are no women, both stalls are wasted and blokes might be standing outside with their legs crossed. Having a rank of single person toilets is a great solution since it will meet the regulations and give the most flexibility. I might move a couple around depending on the size of the building. It could be good to have one that's configured for more abuse near to where the trucks are kept and maintained since users might be greasy, grimly or in desperate need when coming back from a call.

Tesla Megapack battery ignites at substation after less than 6 months

Re: As a farmer/rancher ...

"The first car probably cost a lot more than a carriage and wasn't much good. How'd that work out long term?"

The first cars were status symbols and many were electric. The also had the advantage of being ready to do without needing to hitch up a cart or saddle a horse. Yes, it's doesn't take long to saddle a horse, but I'm a guy and used to be able to swing a saddle over the top of the horse by myself with no problem. Some ladies weren't tall enough or might have been with child so it could be much harder. If they only needed to get in a car to get themselves into town, it would be much faster and simpler. At the time, "town" wouldn't have been that far away.

"Much good" is a very relative term. On many occasions, something that just a little bit better makes a big difference.

Re: As a farmer/rancher ...

"I use ammonia as fertilizer sometimes. It is a royal pain in the ass, and I only use it as a matter of last resort. I certainly don't want it as a commonly used fuel. Far too much room for error."

The ammonia isn't used as the fuel, but a feedstock for a synthesized diesel equivalent.

Are you using the ammonia as a fumigant or applying it directly on the ground?

I wonder if there is a straightforward way to create ammonia based fertilizers on site.

Mozilla drags Microsoft, Google, Apple for obliterating any form of browser choice

Re: Chrome on desktop

"Edge is almost more or less like Chrome these days isn't it?"

If you install Chrome, they get unfettered access to you rather than having to share with or be filtered through M$.

Re: Chrome on desktop

"She clicked on a link in an email which took her to a bank phishing website. Only when she got to the site did she remember that she didn’t bank with that bank.'

It could be a good time to visit the bank with her and configure accounts so she can't accidentally hand over the keys to all of her savings in one go. A "daily" account that has no links (overdraft, etc) to her main savings can be good insulation. I've done that with my mom although right now she's perfectly fine, but she is getting older and I wanted something in place while she was still able to make plans for herself. It can be too late if you have to go through the process of being named as a conservator and all of the red tape that entails.

Re: Chrome on desktop

"In addition, I've seen many people who don't have banking access set up on their devices either. "

Like me. I don't want that channel open to my money. To date, I've not had to access my banking at the drop of a coin. I did have an issue with a debit card being cancelled due to fraud, but that taught me to keep cash on hand at all times.

The biggest issue is making sure the bank knows that I do not want any online access to my accounts so there isn't something sitting out there waiting "to be set up". If I did find myself needing some sort of online access, I'd set up a separate account at a different bank and keep it fed as needed.

Re: Chrome on desktop

"My mother - "The Microsoft isn't working!""

That scares the hell out of my since my inheritance is predicated on dear old mum not getting scammed out of it. My biggest concern is that there's money there so she's looked after and I'm not the one having to do it full time.

This hero probe will smash into an asteroid to see if we can deflect future killer rocks

Re: You are going to need a bigger DART

"Can a Falcon Heavy lob one or two of those into space?"

The bigger question would be "is there a F9H available?"

SpaceX has only launched 3 and one had the original Roadster that should have gone to Martin Eberhard. Two more are in the schedule, but I doubt there's inventory on hand. SpaceX could likely prep and launch 3 F9's much more quickly.

Re: The subtle approach

"Any other positive consequences?"

Good grief, mate! Greedy much?

Re: The subtle approach

"Rocket motors are huge, expensive and heavy. Worse, they require fuel,"

That's why my thoughts are directed towards nuclear propulsion and not chemical. Using an impactor is a technique, but you'd need the time to do it and a fair stock of impactors depending on how much work you needed to do. There is more control with a rocket motor too. The more tools you have, the more choices you have.

Re: The subtle approach

"we have virtually no control over volcanoes."

I don't know about that. Drill a well placed hole in Mauna Loa and drop in a small nuke and the Big Island might get a full resurfacing. The same could happen in Iceland. I have no confidence we could turn off an eruption.

These aren't experiments I want to see run, BTW.

US to relax restrictions for tech companies in Iran

"what happens then....."

Those people will be lucky if they're seen at a trial before sentence is applied. I get the feeling that some that we hear about in these countries that have been accused of many dastardly crimes are the recipients of a whole load of scapegoating to cover the sins of the elite and better connected.

"The problem with Starlink is that by broadcasting on known frequencies it would be trivial for a few drones to fly over a city and triangulate use of Starlink terminals."

The fastest way to turn it off is to find the downlink stations that connect Starlink to the internet. Not all of the current flock of birds have laser side links so they need line-of-sight to a ground station (not customer units). I wouldn't put it past Iran to do some small unit night ops if they need to visit a neighboring country to disable a ground station. They don't need to blow them up either. I can think of numerous ways of making them non-functional that isn't particularly kinetic in a major way. The simplest would be to make it look like some "youths" were stripping the installation for copper.

With the beam-forming of the customer unit antennas, it won't be trivial to find them. There won't be a very wide beam to be able to find the signals unless there is some serious lobing. I don't doubt that they will be looking for them. The only way the government will allow the service is if it's monitored by them and the links sit behind their firewall.

On the US side, Elon will need permission to supply his service to a country under sanctions. He's not very bright, but he should be able to figure out that he could be jeopardizing his licenses in not just the US by circumventing procedures.

NSA super-leaker Edward Snowden granted Russian citizenship

Re: Yeah, draft Snowden into FSB and see what fun leaks ensue as he flees to another country, AGAIN.

"Or Putin can cash them in as a bargaining chip, but I suspect if the US wanted him back that bad Russia would have settled a price for them by now."

I have the feeling that allowing the Snowden's to remain in Russia just to irritate the US government is too priceless to let go. They don't need to have Ed telling tales to "earn his keep". He's a smart and talented guy that is adding his skills to the Russian economy and likely mentoring the people around him as normally happens in a workplace. It was good advertising too for major government whistleblowers everywhere to indicate there could be a place for them... Up until the invasion of Ukraine where they threw all of it away.

US accident investigators want alcohol breathalyzers in all new vehicles

Re: Convenient timing

The FAA has passed a rule that drones report their position in real time while being operated. The only difficulty is there's no mechanism to do that which means manufacturers can't include the capability in their products. ADS-B on aircraft is ruled out so all of the drones "down in the grass" don't overload that system. Using the cell network adds a bunch of overhead in places where there is coverage and means everybody would need another account/SIM for their drone. There are cities nearby me where a few blocks off of the freeway there is no phone signal and may not be for some time as they keep building through the canyons. T-Mobile in my city has had two periods of over 24 hours with no service (A big reason I switched to another carrier) this year and several outages of at least 2 hours. If I have to cancel a drone job for that, I'll be pissed.

Re: No Thanks, Big Brother

"No safety reason to stop a passengers from using a phone."

With a handsfree headset, talking on the phone is no less distracting they having a conversation with a passenger. I do that and if I need to dedicate more attention to the call or need to take notes, I pull off or tell the other person to email me the information or I'll call them back in a little bit. If I "did" text, I wouldn't while driving. The reason I don't respond to Text is due to it taking too much capacity and too much time to be useful. I find email more handy for getting information and I have a system to store that info that I'd have to replicate for text messages and combine the two. No thanks. Call or email and stuff text.

Re: Every which way but loose

"The same AIs that can't drive are now going to be able to prevent me from driving?"

I think we can all see that at some point some of this legislation is going to get passed. The closer that gets, the more I really want to open an auto shop that caters to people that would rather not comply and will pay to make sure then don't have to. New customers by personal reference only.

Re: Zero Tolerance just generates more fines and statistics, not inproved safety

"If you were drinking earlier in the day, I would say just don't drive. At all. It's really not worth the risk. Take a cab (cabs in South Korea are very cheap), have a designated driver who hasn't been drinking, or take public transit."

You don't want to be on public transport when drunk. Too much of a chance you'd get rolled. Depending on where you are, there may not be anything running later at night and you'd still need to get from the stop to your home. My thinking on the taxi would be that I'd like to enjoy a few and not have to set a curfew of 6pm to stop when another nice glass of champagne is being offered. One time when a former roommate got married, I had the money to have a car and driver pick me up from the reception and take me to the BnB where I was staying. I paid in advance so there was no fumbling around with money other than a tip I had in a particular pocket for the driver. If you are going to be somewhere for a couple of days, a car service is much better than a taxi, especially for anything scheduled.

"The real answer is for the police and government to take the existing legal framework more seriously. Lifetime bans for drink drivers would make a lot of drivers sit up and take notice."

More than a lifetime ban, but real prison time. I've watched plenty of the court shows where a person is in the dock for their teenth drink driving violation on a revoked license with no insurance. What boggles my mind is who would lend them a car or how could they afford one when they have such a problem with alcohol? It's expensive enough to have a few at home. At a bar, the cost of three drinks would buy the bottle at the store. Well, except for me since the scotch I like is rarely on offer at a bar since it's rather expensive.