Posts by Down not across

So what can we expect from a Joe Biden White House when it comes to tech? We'll try to answer that right now

I'm not arguing against questioning sleep/instant-on type modes, but just wondering if the metrics used for arguments have been thoroughly calculated, or based on headline grabbing numbers.

I wonder if anyone has calculated total power consumption of instant-on (up to 1W standby consumption) vs hard off and consumption during bootup (especially on older non-SSD consoles) + starting a game.

Also their suggestion of "We have repeatedly urged Sony and Microsoft to include a dedicated low-power chip for video playback in their consoles, and this request is even more important today given the potential for long hours of 'binge watching' via the console." probably doesn't take into account the carbon cost of additional components.

On his way out, Trump emits exec order suggesting US cloud giants must verify ID of all foreign customers

As others have pointed out it would also be pretty trivial to fake an ID in Photoshop since the anti-counterfeiting technology on IDs usually only works when you can see the physical card, not a photo of the card.

Obviously not the case in UK, but in EU many countries have biometric ID cards that are easily used for authentication (yes you need a card reader) as is done for many public sector online services.

No, I'm not advocating it, just saying physical access to the card by the provider does not mean it can't be authenticated.

SpaceX powers through bad case of wind to nail Falcon 9's eighth droneship landing

Re: 8th Time

I'm still impressed. Especially considering the "unfavourable conditions" not being an issue in the end.

Screw you, gadget-menders! No really, you'll need loads of screwdrivers to fix Apple's AirPods Max headphones

Re: £550 headphones

I'm not entirely sure where my DT 880 Studio are, but I still use my DT550 very frequently and I've yet to come across anything (at least for a reasonable price) that would come anywhere near the sound quality (purely in my humble opinion that is).

Police drone plunged 70ft into pond after operator mashed pop-up that was actually the emergency cut-out button

Are we American? Shouldn't we at least use consistent sets of units?

Aviation uses feet for altitude. For rest of measurements to be in metric makes sense.

150,000 lost UK police records looking more like 400,000 as Home Office continues to blame 'human error'

Of course they do. They have an agenda. They've been for decades trying to make IT chartered profession where they can have out of date, expensive certifications.

Must've been over 2 decades ago when I looked and was like how much? For what? Sod that...

With hindsight, yes they are irrelevant.

Back to the office with you: 'Perhaps 5 days is too much family time' – Workday CEO

I'm the opposite, instead of losing 8-10 working hours per week on the commute to the client site I'm actually working so getting more done.

Considering how governments are all making their CO2 reduction policies and promises, you would think they would be heavily encouraging companied to promote WFH where possible to enable them to meet their targets.

WFH (for me anyway) is a win-win. I don't waste time sitting in traffic, I save money on fuel (increase in power and heating at home is not even close to costs of commute).

Companies stand to gain a lot of large proprotion WFH, as that is a lot less desks and associated power and heating/cooling needed.

Offices are not going to disappear, but would expect them to be a lot smaller and more hot desks/meeting rooms rather than traditional office space.

Some roles of course are less suitable for WFH and some people prefer to be in office.

Two clichés, one headline: 'No good deed goes unpunished' and 'It's always DNS'

Re: My Manager!

Even worse are conference calls for panics. People (mostly management) joining randomly all wanting to know status. Since they're all bored, they keep asking every 2 minutes "Are we there yet?"

More than once I have responded "I can either fix this, or answer the constant questions. Which one fo you want?" Generally results in deathly silence.

Re: My Manager!

Bet he was happy to take all the credit for anything good tho.

Re: Change management matters

I would tell the manager to go swivel. Change management is there for a reason. I would also insist on him issuing that order in writing.

At least where I work, it doesn't matter who asks for it, nothing goes to production without it having gone through change management and change being approved.

Signal boost: Secure chat app is wobbly at the moment. Not surprising after gaining 30m+ users in a week, though

Re: It's been obvious for days

Oh, I know its not exactly perfect, and would be nice if there was an alternative.

My point was that if the visibiltiy that you are Signal user is a problem, there are ways around it as it doesn't have to be tied to you real phone number. Communication itself is secure and seems to work well. I still prefer it to anything coming from MZ. Haven't tried Telegram as I'm not a fan of home grown crypto.

Re: It's been obvious for days

The solution to this is simple: users need not to be identified by information which can easily be tied to them by other means. This, for instance, is what Threema does: your ID on the system is not your phone number, your email address, or anything, it's a random string. Contact discovery is now much harder (there are options to make it easier by leaking information equivalent to what Signal leaks, but that's an option, which is off by default).

There is nothing stopping you from getting a PAYG SIM, register to Signal with that (which is when your unique identifier is generated) and then swap back in your regular SIM. You real number will not be visible to Signal or other Signal users.

Watchdog urges Tesla to recall 158,000 Model S, X cars to fix knackered NAND flash that borks safety features

Basic OBD II reader will not really help much other than possibly point in in generic direction of the fault.

Using my prior example of a BMW, INPA actually tells a lot more and shows how the generic codes can be misleading. INPA can be found with bit of searching and all you then need is 30-40 quid cable (assuming you have an old laptop).

Even cheap OBD scanners have come a long way and there are many that now support manufacturer specific protocols (beyond basic OBD) for not much money.

That is not to say that some kit still is not cheap, As an example Tech2 for GM (chinese clone) is not what I'd call cheap. However if you do intend to do work yourself it probably pays itself off first time you can avoid dealer.

There are also lot of good software via many forums dedicated to makes and models of vehicles where only thing you probably need to spend money on is a decent OBD cable (especially for programming you want one with decent UART, K-line support etc).

.

Astonishing. I have devices with flash memory which are far older than these Teslas and all of which still work perfectly (although I do wonder if there's a way of profiling the SSDs to find out how much life they have left in them). So what's the deal? Have I just been lucky, or has Tesla cheaped out on the components in its cars?

Tesla has been caught out few times from using consumer grade components. Whether the NAND is one, I have no idea. Industrial grade SLC is pretty durable, so would seem likely they may have cheaped out for some MLC. Just guessing mind.

I think the compounding,if not bigger reason, than which NAND technology they are using, is how they're using it. They are writing way too much and way too often. Hence their OTA mitigation trying to reduce number of writes.

As for whole issue about critical/important functions being borked by "infotainment", well.

I'd like to know, other than screen wash, what user replaceable parts are there on any modern car?

Pretty much everything just like in old ones. With whole bunch of electronic gubbins added. Admittedly it does help (and for some things is necessary) to have decent diagnostics/programming kit (either standalone or software on a laptop). I had no issues finding/resolving/fixing things on a BMW (albeit bit older) using INPA on old laptop. Likewise for GM (as an example) you can get Tech2 (chinese clone of course) fairly affordably that will let you diagnose and program.

The annoying issue is the increasing habit of automakers starting to code things so even swapping a new battery may mean you need to code it to the car which is just ridiculous.

Dratted 'housekeeping', eh? 150k+ records deleted off UK’s Police National Computer database

Re: Encrypted at rest

Backups should be for restoring the data in event of a problem to the primary, not because the deletion process was followed by mistake as the deletion process should have built in safeguards against mistakes.

Logical corruption, data loss (whether due to accidental deletion or otherwise) is problem at primary and DR won't help as the issues would have likely replicated to any secondaries.

In modern replicated DR environments backups are more to safeguard against logical rather than physical issues, as for physical issues you can fail over to a standby and then resolve issues in primary.

Infosys follows flag-waving US hiring spree with quieter Canadian and Mexican hiring spree

Pyramid

Overall, Rao said that Infosys has the expertise to continue thriving, while its onshore, near-shore, offshore pyramid will help it to control costs.

Pyramid scheme?

The Novell NetWare box keeps rebooting over and over again yet no one has touched it? We're going on a stakeout

Re: Modern problems

So said brand recommends its own version of the LED bulb for that light that comes on when the door opens, so you don't run over Junior's electric buggy. The "interference free" recommended bulb, of course, is a bit more pricey than the one at the home centre.

I suppose its quite likely that there are differences in the quality of the drivers in the bulb. As an example most cheaper basic bulbs are not-dimmable (ie might take offense of tried to be dimmed with triac). A cheap bulb is likely to have fairly basic led driver which could potentially (not necessarily) cause issues/interference elsewhere in the mains circuit. A mains powered LED "bulb" is not just a bulb like old fashioned incandescent mains bulb.

Suggesting their own brand and own brand only does sound bit like money making exercise.

Samsung rolls out new Galaxy S21 range, including extra-lux Ultra

Re: Yet again ....

To use your arguments of people's use cases being different:

I don't have any need for 4KHDR, but I do like removable SD card for either to grab some media to take if I need to take a trip (not likely in near future obviously), to keep Keepass (or other) database on and to store normal photos (its quicker to just plug the microSD with SD adapter to almost anything that reads SD.

Note 7 was my last Samsung (and we all know how long that one lasted). I have since gone back to Nokia which seems to do decent enough, frequently updated Android phones with features I want and very little if any bloatware. As a bonus they're massively more affordable. Note 7 was pushing the price, current flagship prices are insane.

Debian 'Bullseye' enters final phase before release as team debates whether it will be last to work on i386 architecture

Re: 17 more years to go until 2038 kills 32 bits for good

I no longer use 32 bit computers myself since my last one, a former Media center XP laptop, died for real last year.

I still run various architectures down to 8-bit. Granted many of them don't run Linux nor are x86, but the stance that anything below 64-bit is "dead" is quite far from the truth.

Re: I don't need to boot i386

Itanic? Really? Or did you mean x86_64 (or amd64 if you like)?

Four women seek release from forced arbitration to sue Infosys for widespread gender discrimination

Re: Lack of female managers in Indian companies

Was she an expert or a manager?

Re: Bullying yes, but Gender Discrimination? Hmmm.

The "you didn't properly diffuse the situation" is however something I've seen before to target someone; it's a nasty one as there's often an element of truth but also an unrealistic expectation on the person that was being (verbally) attacked.

I doubt that would stand up in UK tribunal. Bottom line is you shouldn't have to deal with that kind of behaviour. The article suggests the person quite calmly stated just that and then just reported the matter to HR. I suppose given she was manager/superior she could be expected to have people management skills, but we all know those are not in abundance in management.

Whilst valid point with regards to the article (so in the US), many in many jurisdictions such clauses are unenforceable and you can not (in practice) sign away your employee rights.

Flash in the pan: Raspberry Pi OS is the latest platform to carve out vulnerable tech

Seconded. I stil have some 170x and 300x knocking about somewhere. Used them with Brother HL-1260 and with LaserJet 4 before swappping to internal MIO.

Boss behind 'reset' of delayed, overbudget Emergency Services Network shifts to new 'digital' Cabinet Office role

Que?

So far all I see is shuffling of people who may have "experience" but have yet to deliver anything (unless delayed, on on-hold or cancelled projects count). Oh and someone from private sector chairing without pay. Pardon me if I don't believe he will be doing it for free.

Yes I'm sure this will all result in improved "personalised" public services. Not.

Motorola stung for £838k after Chinese digital mobile radio biz Hytera wins appeal against UK asset-freezing order

UK != US jurisdiction (almost perhaps, but not quite)

Worried that the Chinese company would evade the US verdict by moving its assets outside US jurisdiction, Motorola filed in London for a freezing injunction against Hytera and two of its UK subsidiaries, Project Shortway Ltd and Sepura Ltd in April last year.

Whilst UK has a habit of cuddling up to the US, I still think its bit of a stretch to file in UK to enforce verdict in US.

The CIA's 'entire' collection of UFO records has been made available for you to sigh at

Re: multipage .tiff files

Talking to Motherboard, Greenewald blasted the CIA for making it "INCREDIBLY difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner" due to the documents' "outdated" format (multipage .tif) and "text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a 'search' tool. In my opinion, this... makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose."

Oh FFS. You got what you wanted and now you're complaining they didn't format it the way you wanted?

Not to mention multipage .tiff sounds about right for original scans so surely better than some other format. It is not exactly rocket science to convert formats.

Look, we've sent space probes to Jupiter and Mars – makes sense to keep them going a while longer, says NASA

Europa

The probe will be directed to the planet’s rings and numerous moons, and is expected to make close flybys of targets Ganymede, Europa and Io.

Careful with Europa. Wouldn't want it to break down and land there.

What’s that in CES heaven, is it a star? Or is it that damned elusive flying car?

Cheers Lester!

Couldn't agree more, that Lester was taken too soon. I do miss his articles.

Nice that he is still well remembered and referred to in articles.

Trump tries one more time to limit H-1B work visas with new minimum salary requirements

Re: We beat you to it!

Even now we are floundering with a new set of regulations that we only finalised 5 days before they came into force. Well planned chaps.

What do you mean? It was easiest deal ever. Oven ready!

Re: Good idea

I have had many specs where the person writing them does not have full knowledge of the actual system which means assumptions can be wrong.

giving contractors/offshore people specs probably means that many of them will just take the spec as read and not question assumptions, which can lead to terrible results if not caught early enough.

When it comes to offshoring, those terrible results may be somewhat intentional. It was written to spec. So pay up, any changes are additionally chargeable work.

SolarWinds malware was sneaked out of the firm's Orion build environment 6 months before anyone realised it was there – report

Re: Pirates on the Solarwinds

Anyone who believes that is a coincidence, I have this nice bridge for sale.

Ubiquiti iniquity: Wi-Fi box slinger warns hackers may have peeked at customers' personal information

None of my Ubiquiti kit is dependent on cloud. I run the controller for APs locally, Edgerouter (when I was running it worked fine without any cloudy things).

That's it. It's over. It's really over. From today, Adobe Flash Player no longer works. We're free. We can just leave

Re: Best thing to happen...

html? What is this trickery you speak of?

I can't (and I know I am not) be the only one here who were quite happy to fetch (and server some of their own) via gopher, veronica. Yes, yes...I got my coat I'm going..

Parler games: Social network for internet rejects sues Amazon Web Services for pulling plug on hosting

Re: @AC and @ Author Thank god

Fix the lighter.

SpaceX wins UK regulator Ofcom's approval for its Starlink mobile broadband base stations

Torn

I'm torn on this.

On one hand I welcome the option for decent bandwidth somewhere where it doesn't exist, especially with more acceptable latency than traditional satellite access.

On the other hand I'm not thrilled with amount of junk being launched into orbit.

Faster optic fibers and superior laser sensors set to descend from space

Re: The beginnings of space industry, then ?

Space elevator would work quite nicely. If the orbital factory was large enough, it could possibly double as the counterweight.

Buggy code, fragile legacy systems, ill-conceived projects cost US businesses $2 trillion in 2020

Re: Praise Where and When Praise is Due.

MAD was widely avaible across Europe in most countries.

Surely a lot of the problem is that the last two words are more often "marketing wants".

Rather often it is more case of company not wanting to pay enough for a decent staff, and they settle for cheap alternatives.

Re: Shortage? What shortage?

Yes.

.

Why is the situation so grim? The report argues there's an IT talent shortage, a claim others have made as well.

Perhaps rather than complaining about artificial skill shortage it might be time to take a really good look at methodologies as well and reassess whether trying to shoehorn agile into every single project was such a great idea. Who knows, it might not be the best approach to every single application/project.

Leave.EU takes back control – and shifts its domain name to be inside the European Union

Re: But why?

"Why did the UK leave the EU?" "Here, there's a website that has several years of articles and commentary that represents many of the arguments used."

Whether you agree with the campaign or not it's historical evidence, so why not keep it? The domain name is itself part of that history, as well as a familiar reference.

So? All the history is in the wayback machine.

I really fail to see further need for the domain, unless they're worried someone else will repurpose the domain and make fun of them and/or rip apart the arguments.

Pizza and beer night out the window, hours trying to sort issue, then a fresh pair of eyes says 'See, the problem is...'

OCR

Oh, that reminds me all too well about when I was doing my bit for the legal export of PGP and helped with proofreading. So got my stack of photocopies and floppy disk(s).

OCR in those days was nowhere near what it is now, so there were lots of corrections needed. There were times when losing the will to live was close. Persisting seemed worth the effort however.

Icon: here's to you who have had to proofread

Breaking? Microsoft pushes 'News and Interests' with first Windows 10 Insiders build of the year

Re: Dear Redmond

Got a flat tire.

Consultants bag £375m for their role in developing the UK's faltering COVID-19 Test and Trace system

Re: In context

It appears cutting the bloody grass is "essential/key work".

Yes, I'm sure other councils have probably even more ridiculous examples.

Re: Test and trace...

Ssh. The rule about Test and Trace is you don't talk about Test and Trace.

Intel calls last orders on 300-series motherboard chipsets

Re: Goldarnit

Depending on your use case and workload, it is definitely worth considering AMD if building a new machine.

New year, new rant: Linus Torvalds rails at Intel for 'killing' the ECC industry

Re: Cheap

That's a plausible theory but unfortunately one that can't be proven. For example, the market may end up with a different stratification, speed rather than ECC vs non-ECC.

I've done that for decades at home. Anything server-like I happily traded speed for reliability and chose slower memory but with ECC. For gaming rig, who cares if it crashes so opted for speed rather than ECC.

That's not to say if I could have my cake and eat it..

Re: Alternatives are available

I would like to have ECC on my home-brew FreeNAS, but I can't justify the additional motherboard and RAM costs or the extra power draw (server grade boards tend to be much more power hungry).

My nas4free is running on HP Microserver (AMD Athlon II (N36L)) with ECC happily and isn't that power hungry. The 4 x 3.5" spinning rust are most likely the largest consumer of power. Newer Microservers have Opteron and IIRC come with iLO (whereas on the older ones iLO was available as add-on card).