Posts by Flywheel

UK flights disrupted by 'technical issue' with air traffic computer system

Re: I smell a CSV file...

I remember the Good Old Days when user input was sanitised and software folk could actual count the number of delimiters in a record!

Microsoft’s Azure mishap betrays an industry blind to a big problem

rm -r *

Do it in style: rm -rfv *

Up to 18,000 Amazon workers in firing line as it chops cost

Re: OMG -- They're firing Alexa

"Alexa .. when's your leaving party?"

UK facing electricity supply woes after nuclear power stations shut, MPs told

Severn Barrage

"Severn barrage"

I seem to remember that there was a tidal scheme planned for Cardiff Bay but the morons in Downing Street cancelled it at the last minute. Idiots!

What's up with WhatsApp? Messaging platform suffers outage in the UK

Re: I'm taking a guess:

Apparently the NSA use GCHQ as a swap partition...

Lash#Cat9: A radical new Linux UI for keyboard warriors

Ditto. 2 minutes into the video was enough for me to ask why I'd need all this stuff? It's like a Swiss Army Knife but with 37 blades. It's a nope.

Infosec still (mostly) a boys club

Re: What can be done to stop that

Is/would that be the case though? If I was hiring an Infosec company I'd do it on the basis of whether they do the job or not.

What can be done to stop that

Women need to form infosec companies, employing women.

Cost of living crisis less of problem for tech pro retirees than others

Interesting

I'm due to retire Real Soon Now and have little or no intention of going back to my "developer" job trying to write ever more ingenious software that can make sense of the crap data that clients send in.

Updating skills and qualifications as a matter of course might be a good way to go. As we pointed out previously, a poster on Hacker News said: "The only way that age becomes a detriment is if you do not grow."

Ha! Call me sceptical, but when I'm free of the corporate red-tape la-la I'll be growing like a giant - my side-projects will be testament to that.

California to phase out gas furnaces, water heaters by 2030

Re: Wishful thinking

> any attempt to force the issue is likely to have devastating political consequences

Ah... like the UK, this sentence tells us exactly why we (as a planet) will never achieve Net Zero. Never mind that Mother Nature is throwing her fiery and watery toys out of the pram and some of us are running out of water (while others drown in it); no politician has the guts to say what really needs to be done to save us, and actually do it!

Re: Are they mandating the replacement tech?

> heat pump ...They're quite viable for new construction

It'll be interesting to see how this progresses: looking at some of the potential ones on offer in the UK it'd mean quite a sizeable chunk of outside space, and I suspect the noise level, if similar to aircon would be noticeable enough to be annoying on a new estate.

Serious surfer? How to browse like a pro on Firefox

Lynx still works fine for serious web sites

Just sayin'

Datacenter outages are costing more, $1m+ failures now common

Re: Good timing

I suspect it'll take at least a month for mangelement to make up its mind one way or the other

Maybe they'll listen to the UK Government and realise that we all have until 2050 to get our acts together, by which time the UK will just magically switch to carbon-free power. It'll be fine.

"Mr Flywheel, time to wake up and take your meds"...

Admins run into Group Policy problems after Win10 update

Re: There are other options that could make you happy, you just have to take the first step

I did that years ago and have never regretted it. I love my Linux updates which are fast, unobtrusive and often release space after the updates are complete. Reboot? Nope - rarely.

I installed a (legal) copy of Windows 10 Pro 64 bit on Virtualbox though, just because I need to run "real" Excel occasionally and yes, all it does is updates, updates and more updates.

By Jove! Jupiter to make closest approach to Earth in 70 years next Monday

Gas giant

"Government announces plans to frack Jupiter - PM announces firm 'known to Tory Party' who will install pipeline back to Earth"

IBM wins contract to support NHS App

Re: So they will be killing off older people then?

Setting up the new app:

Please select your Age Group:

[ ] 0-13

[ ] 14-19

[ ] 20-55

Government buyers take 22 months on average to procure tech

lack subject matter experts

This isn't confined to IT matters though - the whole Government relies on vested interests and brown envelopes. SMEs can rarely offer anything other than knowledge which apparently goes against fueling the Gravy Train.

Microsoft to stop accepting checks from partners

Re: Ahh cheques.

Yeah, they plowed all their checks into buying a US spellchecker - or should that be spellchequer?

$50m+ contract for crime-fighting IT system won by Fujitsu after no one else bid

There's potential problems on the Horizon

Memories are short, especially in the political arena...

Amazon has repackaged surveillance capitalism as reality TV

Re: Apathy is the problem

Talking of Plod, we had a spate of anti-social behaviour outside our and neighbours houses, and luckily we were able to capture a couple of weeks-worth of depressing yobbery on our front door CCTV (not a Ring). The first thing the police asked when we eventually involved them was "do you have CCTV?" and "can you send us a copy of the relevant bits?". We duly did, and the problem was sorted within weeks.

Prior to that though, we made damn' sure with the aid of the installer that other peoples' privacy was maintained as far as possible which we were able to do because of the cam's ball and socket mounting. Ultimately, from the (limited) overspill coverage our immediate neighbours will benefit if their property is threatened.

UK's largest water company investigates datacenters' use as drought hits

if only there was a use for a constant supply of hot water !

Y'know, like data centres get together and supply community heating systems? Duh.

Lloyd's to exclude certain nation-state attacks from cyber insurance policies

"those that happen during wars, beginning in seven months' time"

So are they anticipating that the war in Ukraine will be over in 7 months time?

Supply chain worries heat up again as China shuts down factories to cool its citizens

Unprecedented

.. statement from China: power cuts, which prioritized residents' access to juice

Since when have actual people been more important than factory output in the Middle Kingdom?!

When will the UK take another giant leap into space?

He's waiting for a couple of Raspberry Pi's to become available - he may have a looooong wait!

Our software is perfect. If something has gone wrong, it must be YOUR fault

Re: UX Designer?

Of course everyone can read light gre/ay on white! Stop moaning!

UK wants criminal migrants to scan their faces up to five times a day using a watch

Power

If it's anything like my Apple Watch they'll need to remember to not be away from a power socket at any time. Or maybe the Gov will give the wearers a belt-mounted power pack as well, just in case.

Tesla promises to build robot you could beat up – or beat in a race

Re: "The bot has a brief to eliminate 'dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks.'"

"Accountants everywhere will be terrified"

Raspberry Pi 4 takes a trip to Vulkan, sharpens 3D vision

Tut!

Sounds good, but I'm still waiting for the avalanche of emails that I signed up for promising to "mail me when we have some in stock". That was so long I decided to just not bother. And yes, I've heard of the geolocator thing, and no, for the last time I don't want a frigging Raspberry Pi Pico W, with or without wireless. FFS.

Homes in London under threat as datacenters pull in all the power

Re: I still don't understand

one apartment building = dozens of families and a tiny (usually already crowded) roof

Let me see now .. solar panels benefits the block tenants, so no money to made there. Lots of phone masts looking like a metal porcupine = a steady stream of money for the block owner. As usual, it's down to dirty money.

Re: Not near wind farms

a lot of people want easy access to their DC

They can just hop into their electric vehicles and go there if they're within range...

Chinese booster rocket tumbles back to Earth: 'Non-zero' chance of hitting populated area

Devo have covered this ...

Space Junk

Your job was probably outsourced for exactly the reason you suspected

my actual vocabulary is limited to a couple of hundred common words

No problem! I spent a week in the Czech Republic with a vocabulary of "hello", "yes", "no", "2 beers please"

Re: "Shri" Lanka

"Shri" Lanka is a little-known island off the South-West of Sri Lanka. "Shri" literally means "tiny island" in Sinhala. Not a lot of people know that. Obvs.

Amazon sues 10,000 Facebook Group admins for offering fake reviews

Amazon - letting their own market place be polluted...

Actually, look at the number of reviews that end with the statement "at that price I can't be bothered to return [faulty item]".

It's getting so bad now that I usually look for reviews on other, more credible sites before I spend money with Amazon.

Security flaws in GPS trackers can be abused to cut off fuel to vehicles, CISA warns

If you don't trust the particular version in question there are dozens more with unintelligible names on Amazon. No surprise there either.

UK Info Commissioner slams use of WhatsApp by health officials during pandemic

Re: we all know one big reason

a data protection and management nightmare but no-one seems to be doing anything to rein it in

In a case like this, isn't it usually because there is no official, practical working alternative? And if so, why is that?

Canadian ISP Rogers falls over for hours, takes out broadband, cable, cellphones

Time for a name change

A rebrand always improves performance! How about Rogered ?

Pentester says he broke into datacenter via hidden route running behind toilets

Comment of the day! W00t!

Supply chain blamed amid claims of Azure capacity issues

Microsoft is struggling to balance growing customer demand

... with the support it is giving to the Ukrainian government

So if the war continues for another 10 years as some have predicted, how is that going to work out?!

UK signs deal to share police biometric database with US border guards

If this was the UK, Sunak would introduce a swingeing tax on ammunition - sure, buy all the guns you want, but can you afford to buy the bullets?!

Re: Pass the parcel

Who is lobbying for this?

And who is lobbying against this ?

Is computer vision the cure for school shootings? Likely not

Re: Self defence.

Hopefully you missed off the /s at the end of your post, but in case you didn't, there's this https://abcnews.go.com/US/year-boy-fatally-shoots-year-girl-finding-dads/story?id=85847028

is machine learning really ready to prevent mass murder?

Well, it worked really well in Idiocracy (automated guns on the prison building) which certain parts of the US are now starting to resemble..,

NanoAvionics satellite pulls out GoPro to take stunning selfie over Earth

If this was the UK they would have had to nip out to a local Currys and negotiate their way out the extended warranty hard-sell, then use the money saved to buy a space-proof case.

First steps into the world of thought leadership: What could go wrong?

My Employee!

The rest? I honestly haven't a clue who they are. They ask to connect and I accept

I was on Linkedin a while back, in the days when I foolishly assumed I could take pictures for the music industry and get paid. One day I looked at my LinkedIn account and was surprised and amazed to find that I had not only acquired an employee (in Mumbai), but that he had been working for me for over a year! I tied unsuccessfully to contact "John" (for that was not his name), and then tried to contacting "Support" to get him removed. I heard nothing. The worrying thing was that he didn't even bother to ask to connect. What a great system!

Amazon shows off robot warehouse workers that won't complain, quit, unionize...

Re: "The Invaders" Red Glow

> tuning how hard to hit each employee with the laser

In the near future, Amazon associates will be required to have a QR code tattooed on their ankles to ensure that the robots don't have to twist and turn too much...

End of the road for biz living off free G Suite legacy edition

Re: So, advertising doesn't bring in enough money then ?

And I'm sure they'll continue to use their all-encompassing telemetry to watch your every move. And you'll pay for that "privilege"

IBM ordered to hand over ex-CEO emails plotting cuts in older workers

Re: Seventy-one in six years?!?!?

kill off everyone capable of actually doing anything

It's okay, they'll have an AI product for that, real soon now. However, if you look at what they've achieved with Artie the seven-armed octopus, a stowaway on the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, they're screwed.

Record players make comeback with Ikea, others pitching tricked-out turntables

Re: Digital transmission?

I guess if they use crappy Chinese chips, the pops, ticks, and hiss would be added by those same chips. For free! A feature, not a bug!

TSMC and China: Mutually assured destruction now measured in nanometers, not megatons

Britain, alas, seems destined once again to blithely assume that it'll all work out in the end

It'll be the usual Tory mantra - "no problem, we'll just buy it from someone else".