Posts by H in The Hague

Techie lured out of retirement to support software only he remembered

Control systems too

A few years ago I visited a customer site where they were doing scheduled maintenance on a blast furnace.

They were also replacing the blast furnace control system so an elderly American gentleman had come out of retirement, again. Apparently he was one of the few people around who really knew the old control system inside out. By that the time new control system had been running in parallel with the old one for a year for test purposes.

Impressive operation: thousands of contractors on site, large storage areas where steel slabs were stacked up so they could still supply steel during the shutdown, costs I think well over 10 million per day. To save a few days, instead of removing the crust at the bottom of the blast furnace with hydraulic hammers this time they simply used explosives. To start the rebuilt furnace up they built a crib of railway sleepers at the bottom and then covered that with several metres of old wooden pallets, etc. they been saving up for years. Eventually they collected fire from the other blast furnace which was still running and carried it to the new one to light it, while singing a traditional song. (Spoiler alert: by that time the hot blast from the other furnace had already lit it.)

My host commented that they were documenting everything meticulously as the next shutdown would be in at least 10, preferably 15 years, by which time he would have retired,

"But Switzerland has worked our how to pay for ever more generous pensions with a shrinking working age population by simply banning immigration"

Nope, for the past 27 years or so, the EU and Switzerland have had mutual freedom of movement:

https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/en/home/themen/fza_schweiz-eu-efta.html

(I think there are also other agreements between the EU and CH which means CH has many of the benefits of being an EU member, and pays into the EU budget, without actually being an EU member, which means they don't get to vote on EU regulations. I think there are similar deals with Norway.)

Some Mullvad VPN customers tunnel for exit after co-founder donates millions to populist party

Re: Sad but not surprising

"who mostly wanted a "Singapore upon Thames"

Now, I remember reading somewhere that Singapore has immigration levels and most people there live in rented social housing. Does anyone know if that's correct?

Tech support chap told angry customer to think inside the box – and solved the problem

Re: "when many phones still had removable batteries"

'The 7 only got rid of the headphone socket."

Due to a gravity-related incident with my 5 earlier this week I just got a 7 and I'm now listening to it on my headphones - mercifully it's still got a minijack socket.

One thing to bear in mind is that the Xcover 7 is quite a bit larger and heavier than the 5.

The 7 doesn't seem to be listed on the Samsung website and not many retailers have it in stock so perhaps it's being discontinued. Incidentally, parts availability seemed to be limited for the 5, so if your phone needs regular repairs or accessories the Xcover series is not for you.

Re: "when many phones still had removable batteries"

"To be fair, i think it's a good tradeoff to not have removable batteries, but have better water-proofing. "

My Samsung Xcover 5 claims to be waterproof, but also has a removable battery. Looks like the Xcover 7 is similar.

Re: Only half user fail here

"Pack the phone in the box in such a way that vital parts, needed for operation, are hidden below the lowest layer of cardboard, "

I got myself a fancy Protos safety helmet. Fitting the chin straps was a complete pain and it was unclear how you had to do that, but eventually got it done. Later, when I tore the box up to put it in the recycling, I found the fitting instructions in the bottom, hidden by other packaging.

Photovoltaics are still running after a year under Swiss trains

Re: 19MWh? are you sure?

Here in NL our 6 panels generate around 2000 kWh = 2 MWh per year. These are modern panels and installed in a favourable location. Our installation is actually quite modest compared to what other folk have.

Problem is: on sunny days there is now a glut of electricity. That means that net metering is coming to an end and the effective feed-in tariff is laughably low. So now looking at a home battery.

Where there's a will, AI still has work to do

Re: Another application where…

"an old school expert system"

Yes!!!! (Apologies for shouting.)

One of my customers is now trying so called AI for troubleshooting support. So that leaves the software to determine the causes and effects. It strikes me that it would be more efficient to interview some human experts in their service departments and consolidate their knowledge in an expert system. In face I set up the basis for something like that well over two decades ago. Think I used software from Office Workstations in Edinburgh, but not sure. And when I recently looked for expert system software I couldn't really find anything.

So, dear commentards, any suggestions for expert system software which is still available? Paid or FOSS.

How the AI bubble could pop and take down the global economy, according to the BIS

Re: I think the BIS needs to change "could" to "will"

"Tulip bulbs are very nutricious.."

Not sure about that. Think some people tried eating them during the "Hunger winter" in the Netherlands towards the end of WWII and the bulbs harmed their health.

Sysadmin broke hardware worth more than he made in a month – and lied his way out of the mess

Re: "Shipping Damage"

" lobbing the two packages over the fence"

Well, a few years ago, in a small town in Germany, I passed a gate with the note "If we're not here, chuck the deliveries over the gate." But that was a tyre fitter's yard :)

UK firm bombarded debt-ridden people with 5.5M texts

Re: Porbably outside the remit of ICO, but:

"And how about directors not having to live in the UK"

That used to be an issue but now you you have to prove your identity: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/verifying-your-identity-for-companies-house

If you're in the UK system you can use GOV.UK One Login, otherwise you go through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider.

Brits still reckon Big Tech isn't paying enough tax

Re: Hmmmm...

"Sadly not many outfits have such a wide stock and often same day delivery."

We could always try to buy less stuff. Perhaps less stuff but of higher quality.

And if that makes me sound like a loony lefty - well, I ain't.

Users claimed they'd never seen a spell checker and panicked at the sight of red squiggles

Re: "this is just how MS Word works"

"One thing I've learned from watching "Brokenwood Mysteries" is that "yes" is pronounced "yis" in New Zealand."

I've got some friends who moved from the UK to NZ. Soon after they moved into their new home they got chatting with one of the neigbours. This gentleman complained at length about another neighbour's big dick and how the council/local authority should require him to cut his dick to the permitted size, etc. My friends were a little puzzled about this until they eventually realised the chap was talking about a deck, in the garden.

Word formatting marks

Years ago I delivered a Word document to some typesetting folk. Panicked e-mail: your document is full of strange symbols. Turns out I forgot to turn off Word Show formatting marks (similar to Reveal codes in WordPerfect (yes, I'm that old)). Something these folk were unfamiliar with so I had to explain it, politely.

Anyway, it's almost that time of the week -->

(can we have a wine icon?)

Re: "this is just how MS Word works"

EN-Z (Zetland). Or 'Shetland' if you prefer modern spelling. Postcode still uses ZE.

Consultant mistakenly deleted a ton of data – but reported it as a bug

Move instead of delete

I've always found it much safer to not delete files which are no longer required, but to move them to a separate directory (e.g. Oldstuff). Once I've done that, I might take a look at Oldstuff and decide to actually nuke the files. But then it's v clear what I'm deleting and there is less chance of zapping stuff I still need.

GOV.UK goes Dutch on payments as it dumps Stripe

Re: Stripe is USAian

"It actually makes things worse as much more data can be harvested from an always on smartphone"

Just because you can use Wero from your smartphone doesn't mean you have to.

Ideal/Wero is extensively used in NL. It just provides you with a link to your usual e-banking system, so the payee uses their familiar system. The recipient just notices the money landing in their account, without additional data being exposed. That is the whole point of Ideal/Wero.

I only use Ideal/Wero with online banking on my PC, at the office, with a separate hardware authenticator. I could install a banking app on my phone, but prefer not to.

Lab worker built a fake PC to nuke his lunch

Re: What am I missing?

That link does indeed seem to be missing. Writer in a hurry, or coffee-deficient? Or was so-called AI used to write or edit the article in part?

DIY mystery box will wow your friends by hinting at what the ionosphere is up to

Re: Perfect....

A mate of mine made a film inspired by the numbers stations, and, I think, something he read on El Reg: https://vimeo.com/495414689 Bit arty farty for me, but the last scene might appeal to vintage radio enthusiasts :)

Support tech caught by 'Technician Aura': the bug that only hides when you're watching

Re: A bang is worse than a crash

"(I've never understood how that might happen, TBH. Would they have been using radio-controlled detonators, perhaps?)"

The electromagnetic field of a transmitter might just induce enough power in the detonator circuit to trigger it. Probably not relevant in most cases, but with explosives it's worth taking safety seriously. Similarly, oil rigs maintain radio silence during some operations with explosives, see e.g. https://glossary.slb.com/Terms/r/radio_silence.aspx

'Invisible mouse' made a mess of PC rebuild

Fire hazard

Chap I used to know was apparently v untidy at work. One of his colleagues mentioned he visited this gentleman in his paper-strewn office and when the phone rang he couldn't find it to answer it. Allegedly some time later his office was condemned as a fire hazard.

Brit dual nationals grounded by border digitization drive

Re: unsure whether she would be able to return to the UK

"A British passport costs 150 quid or so every 10 years. It's neither expensive nor a lot of effort. The form takes literally 10 minutes to complete."

If you have a passport then indeed it's not too difficult or expensive to renew it. But it gets a lot more complicated if you have to apply for your first passport if you are overseas or if your passport lapsed.

In my view the main issue is that the change in rules was not communicated - the first thing I and a lot of colleagues heard about it was in a posting on a professional society's forum a few months ago (which referred to an American magazine, of all things).

It would have taken the UK consulate in NL no more than 10 minutes to have written a v short e-mail with a link to the relevant website and mail that to half a dozen social clubs and professional societies here which have a lot of Brits as members. But they never did. And it wasn't communicated at border crossings either.

Work experience kids messed with manager's PC to send him to Ctrl-Alt-Del hell

Re: Old Nokia phones

"I know that in Scotland, the noun "messages" is synonymous with "shopping"."

And Ireland.

And, in a way, the Netherlands, where "boodschappen" means both "shopping" and "parcels of information.

Poland bans camera-packing cars made in China from military bases

Also industrial vehicles

A company I know of rented and borrowed some Chinese industrial vehicles to take a look at them. Those have cameras to give the operator a better view of the area around their vehicle. They noticed that some of the electronics were still drawing power even when the vehicles was supposed to be switched off. So before bringing them onto their site, they put masking tape over all the cameras.

New hire fixed a problem so fast, their boss left to become a yoga instructor

"Which winery in Newberg?"

https://www.alexanawinery.com/

"I just had a 20" Trinitron that my co-worker claimed gave him sunburn. "

That's just taken me back the best part of half a century. At secondary school we had Apple IIs with monochrome monitors which brought my face out in a rash. A few years later I got myself an Apple IIc with the Apple monitor and never had any problems with that, or with the IBM 5110s running APL at uni.

So, I wonder what the problem was - static electricity?

That time of the week again --> (Though I've opted for a nice red from Newberg, Oregon)

Techie's one ring brought darkness by shorting a server

Re: No Capes, No Scarves, No Ties, No Necklaces, No Watches, No Bracelets, No Rings

"He had a good one about getting something nasty on his hands & finding out when he went for a pee..."

Which is why safety instructions at some plants used to tell you to wash your hands _before_ you went to the loo.

Re: No KZZEERT, no activity either

"Well I'd assumed the variac would put out a low voltage when turned down - which it did ... by varying the neutral rather than live. So instead of something like 10V out, I had 220-230V out."

Variacs are normally autotransformers, so there is no galvanic separation between input and output - unlike with from normal transformers. Not everyone knows that, and they may not be labelled to indicate that :( - as you discovered.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotransformer for a pretty picture which is clearer than my explanation above.

Engineer used welding shop air hose to 'clean' PCs – hilarity did not ensue

Re: WD40

"screws ...vwhich of course would often go missing"

Car parts suppliers have handy bowls with a magnetic base. That holds them in place on a vehicle and I think also holds the small parts inside them. And iFixit have a magnetic mat. You can write on that with dry erase markers, so some of those screws might even go back in the right place.

Gosh, is it that time of the week again? -->

Techie banned from client site for outage he didn’t cause

Re: Typical council

"We had a VP who said at a meeting that outsourcing IT work was good because it gave him someone to sue."

Getting a judgment against an underperforming outsourcer is one thing. Collecting the money from them is an entirely other thing.

The Y2K bug delayed my honeymoon … by 17 years!

"Government will always be, at a minimum, inefficient, and typically a bunch of self-serving wankers."

Depends where you live. On the whole I've been v happy with the efficiency of the council services here in The Hague, the Netherlands. A while ago I spotted some broken glass on the road here, reported it through their portal and asked them to sweep it up (was too much for me to do myself), got a response two or three hours later confirming that it'd been sorted. Went to check, and yes the road was clean again. Some more recently, spotted a loose branch in a tree, went to the portal, picked the tree out on the street plan, got a response the same day that the tree was due to be felled anyway. Not really had such interactions with central government but their online tax portal certainly works well.

Guess you get the public services you vote, and pay, for.

Diversion to power datacenters earns Boom Supersonic a ticket to revive fast air transport

Boom vs aeroderivative vs industrial turbines

Boom claim: "Turbines built for conventional aircraft, he asserts, can’t be adapted into datacenter power plants because ..."

Really? It's a while since I had anything to do with power generation, but the aeroderivative turbines used in power stations are optimised for that application and duty cycle. Their manufacturers have decades of experience in this field. Furthermore, some turbines used in power plants are not aeroderivative designs, but heavy duty industrial units, with a different design heritage. Again, proven in the field for many years.

Now, I don't know much about space applications, but I would expect Boom's design to be optimised for relatively short flights. That shouldn't stop thm modifying it for use in power stations, but it's going to take a lot of work.

Another thing: gas turbines have a low efficiency. So in base load powerstations their waste heat is normally used to raise steam which drives a steam turbine to generate more electricity. This is known as a combined cycle system. Given that data centres are likely to be base load users, Boom would need to team up with some steam experts to get a reasonable fuel efficiency. That's going to take a while. Though I suppose you could use their engines on their own for intermittent applications such as dealing with peak loads.

Big Tech's control freak era is breaking itself apart

Re: As irrational as it sounds...

"For an Enterprise to succeed in the long term they must truly think in the long term but that hasn't been happening in decades, at least."

Depends on the business model. Certainly a big problem in the US and the UK. But in, say, the Netherlands and Germany there are still many family-owned companies which take a long term view. One of my customers in NL turns over a billion euros a year, supplies kit to over a 100 countries (UK is an important market to them, and two key sectors in the UK are highly dependent on their products). There are still family members working in the company (after they've first gained experience elsewhere) and their focus is very much on the long term. So they really invest in their products, people and factories. E.g. I've interviewed some of their employees who celebrated their 50th work anniversary, and when they build a factory they do that on land they own - because in the long term that's more attractive. And they're profitable.

But that would be anathema to many US/UK financial folk :(.

Intern had no idea what not to do, so nearly mangled a mainframe

Re: Expensive Lessons

"Maybe we need better training materials"

Training materials are expensive, not having training materials can be much more expensive.

(Disclosure: I write training materials, though currently for the heavy lifting industry rather than IT. Talking of crashes, some years ago folks at a nuclear power station decided they could lift a 400 t piece of kit themselves, only they got it wrong and dropped it on top of the reactor. Amazingly, no serious damage (though probably some clean trousers needed). Those lifting operations are now done by one of my customers, using procedures I wrote, No crashes, so far.)

CIO made a dangerous mistake and ordered his security team to implement it

"In 1990, RAM was about a hundred bucks per meg."

I have a distinct (but possibly incorrect) memory of S100 memory boards costing that amount per kilobyte.

Yes, I do have grey hair :)

‘I nearly died after flying thousands of miles to install a power cord for the NSA’

Re: Vintage Kit from the 1980's

Finally managed to visit there last year, after a decade or two of it being closed whenever I was in London. Yes, fascinating and well worth a visit for Commentards. https://www.testingworks.org.uk/

Incidentally, I got the same response when I tried to make a suggestion. But otherwise the hosts were v friendly.

VMware must support crucial Dutch govt agency as it migrates off the platform, judge rules

"Good on the Dutch."

Usually the key issue in disputes like this is that under Dutch law parties to a contract have to be "fair and reasonable" to each other, and that can indeed override the terms of the contract.

Techie went home rather than fix mistake that caused a massive meltdown

Re: Honestly

"Surely there are metric diameters available ? 25.4mm pipe ?"

Careful with that: on the whole (at least in plumbing and chemical engineering (i.e. posh plumbing)) inch sizes refer to the bore (inner diameter) and mm sizes to the outer diameter.

So 1 1/2 inch scaffolding pipe is also referred to as 48.3 mm pipe, even though 1.5 inch = 38.1 mm. And to add to the confusion some pipes are available with different wall thicknesses so their inch size stays constant but the mm size changes.

Suddenly feel the need for one of these -->

Admin brought his drill to work, destroyed disks and crashed a datacenter

Re: Nothing like as traumatic

"even if the clean up is tedious."

Recently took some old drives apart. Decided to try and get the platters out to put into the 'Will be useful some day bin'. Tried to lever a platter out, then discovered it was glass, not aluminium :(. Just as well that I was wearing safety glasses! And that corner of the workshop needed vacuuming anyway :)

Also had to dispose of hundreds of CDs and DVDs with back-ups. Having them shredded turned out to be quite expensive. Cutting through a stack with a jigsaw wasn't a great success as the plastic melts and coats the sawblade. And probably not very safe. Eventually cut them up with tinsnips, that didn't take too long - quite therapeutic and meditative. Did that inside a clear plastic bag to catch any plastic splinters which were flying around.

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

Re: Whoops

""-ize" is British, the canonical Oxford English Dictionary still prefers it to this day. "-ise" is a shift purely, as far as I can see, for the sake of modernizing, pushed by Chambers."

As far as I'm aware it has to do with adopting ancient Greek works in English, some should get an S, others a Z. But not an expert.

Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee

Re: Never heard of Romex cables?

"There was a channel across the ceiling in the polystyrene insulation (no, really), at the bottom of which was a 1.5mm2 Cale to the cooker. "

Obscure fact for your next pub quiz: you're not supposed to put PVC-sheathed cables directly onto polystyrene foam insulation. If you do that the plasticiser from the plasticised PVC cable will migrate to the polystyrene. As a result the cable sheath turns into unplasticised PVC which is brittle and will crack when the cable is disturbed.

Time of the week -->

Downward DOGE: Elon Musk keeps revising cost-trimming goals in a familiar pattern

"For example, if there is a large wind farm and the wind is blowing hard, but the transmission lines can't take that much power from it, ....."

That's exactly what they are working on in the North Sea: producing hydrogen from offshore wind farms and piping that to the shore through repurposed natural gas pipelines. Or even new pipelines - transporting a given amount of energy as gas is much cheaper than as electricity (but you need to invest in electrolysers, etc.).

The Netherlands branch of the Institution of Chemical Engineers recently organised a session of very interesting talks about energy transition, hydrogen, electricity, etc.

In response to another post: yes, ammonia is an option for long distance transport and for storage. Hydrogen is probably better for short distance applications. Both hydrogen and ammonia can be used for a range of industrial processes. Most of the technology is available or being developed - it's now more of a social/economic/political issue.

Static electricity can be shockingly funny, but the joke's over when a rack goes dark

"bent at an angle from the airflow and never touched the ground anyway!"

Presumably when the car stops they'll straighten and then carry the charge away to earth, in an instant.

But haven't needed them myself.

But in relation to cars, your clothing rubbing against the upholstery when you get out of the car might also impart static electricity on your body, and such a strap wouldn't help against that.

Users hated a new app – maybe so much they filed a fake support call

"It's blindingly obvious but we genuinly received a rota with "St. Ives" as the location. Yes, the inevitable happened."

I think something similar, but in the music industry, inspired the development of What Three Words.

Tech trainer taught a course on software he'd never used and didn't own

Works for Latin too

About half a century ago a friend of mine got her English degree and found a job teaching at a small school in Cornwall. When she got there she discovered she had to teach Latin as well, a language she was completely unfamiliar with. So she started on the textbooks and tried to be one week ahead of the class. Needless to say, some annoying kid was two weeks ahead of the rest of his class and kept asking annoying questions.

This one weird trick can make online publishing faster, safer, more attractive, and richer

Re: How much?

"I'd give them a tenner a year"

So would I, might stretch to GBP 12 :)

LLM aka Large Legal Mess: Judge wants lawyer fined $15K for using AI slop in filing

Marketing

From the article "who knows how models are being used in marketing ..."

Somebody at the US subsidiary of one of my customers writes 1000-word long bits of waffle about their machinery (the kit is actually v good). All perfectly good English, but devoid of content, some general observations about their industry, but nothing that informs customers about the products. Pretty sure that's been written by "AI". So then their colleague in Europe sends the copy to me, I edit it, cut it to 300 words and add relevant information. Doesn't actually take that long if you understand the machines - so a nice little earner for me.

Incidentally yesterday I interviewed a developer at another customer and they mentioned they might give their telemetry units more processing power, so they could implement Machine Learning (studiously avoiding the term AI, so they've actually thought about it.)

BOFH: The USB stick always comes back – until it doesn't

Re: "putting even more addends onto the stack of stupidity."

"Keeping an old tinmans soldering iron handy"

Not quite at the same scale, but in the early 1980s I was a member of some sort of hobby club. One of the projects was to build a radio: started by drilling rows of holes in a sheet of aluminium so I could fold it into a chassis. Then installed the valve bases and tagboards for the wiring on it, then soldered all the parts using a 60 W or so soldering iron. Then built a cabinet out of plywood and mixed up some stain to finish it. Pretty stupidly outdated at that time, but now it would be considered seriously cool retro stuff.

So I asked the chap for advice when I went to get my own soldering iron and mentioned that I might want to do something with those newfangled transistors. He suggested just going for the 60 W model and being careful to solder quickly! So that's how I got my heavy soldering iron with the wooden handle, still got it somewhere. Though when I started assembling circuit boards with 7400-series TTL logic I did get a smaller one :).

Which reminds me I should really do something with all those boxes of valves and vintage radio components I inherited from my father-in-law. And the Rees Mace marine radio with rotary converter. Perhaps when I retire.

Tesla sales crash in Europe, UK. We can only wonder why

Re: Tesla was all about PR

"powered by hydrocarbons either as turbines or fuel cells for a while yet."

Why turbines????????

They have a very poor efficiency. Which is why almost every power station that runs gas turbines uses a combined cycle where the waste heat from the turbine is used to raise steam to run a steam turbine. Not the easiest thing to incorporate into a car.

Though I think in the 1950s there was some turbine car project in the US but that didn't go anywhere.

What inspired you to mention turbines?

Arrr! Can a sailor's marlinspike fix a busted backplane?

Re: changed the look on XP to 'classic'

"Sad about Thunderbird and every major Browser ignoring OS Theme and either copying Chrome or Win 10."

I occasionally use the browser part of Vivaldi and that can follow the OS theme. You can find that with: Help - Vivaldi Welcome tour, then it's the first question.

Which reminds me I should take another look at the Vivaldi e-mail component. Thunderbird mostly works for me but I find it annoying that it keeps all attachments in both the Inbox and Sent files directories which therefore get very large. I much preferred Eudora which allowed you to place received attachments in a separate directory.

Have a good weekend ->