Posts by NeilPost

UK immigration systems delayed by extra Ukraine visa work

Re: A hack

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation

Apple forgoes cooling systems in M2 MacBook Air

Re: The title is no longer required.

A MacBook does not have an IPX68 certified rating in the misrepresented water resistance claims the device is advertised/sold with.

That being said, they are missing a servicing trick like with posh/expensive watches getting the water seal changed for regular fees.

So if you put your watched up arm in a bath, pool, river, sink etc to retrieve a dropped iPhone - well within the IPX rating- Tag Heuer (other watch manufacturers are available) would not tell you to fuck- off/£500 to repair, whereas Apple would if they started to malfunction due to water ingress.

Samsung teases 11 Texas fabs as $50 billion CHIPS Act vote nears

How can you write the same conflicting statements on the same article?!

“ Of course, Samsung has yet to commit to anything. Intel, on the other hand, has broken ground on more than $40 billion worth of new foundry capacity based largely on the assumption that it will receive government support. ®”

“ The documents [PDF], posted on the Texas comptroller's website late Wednesday, outline plans to expand Samsung's operations well beyond the $17 billion fab already under construction in Taylor, 25 miles north of Austin.”

… so looks like Samsung have already flopped their $17bn dollar phallus on the Texan grill.

Google, Oracle clouds still affected by UK heatwave

Rust Pedantry

“ Google understands the frailties of spinning rust so will presumably have replicated data on multiple devices and understand how to recover the devices. If data is lost, it will dent the G-Cloud's reputation.”

Although it was a jovial sound-bite,…. Aluminium drive platters don’t rust - esp. sealed in a drive unit.

Re: doesn't make sense

Sounds like hw (fan?)failure in a storage chassis causing it to cook. Perhaps miscondigured for auto-shutdown on temperature thresholds ?

BAE scores $699 million contract to support US Army supercomputers

Re: Therein lies the problem

However for HPC … little experience.

You would have thought HPE would be the natural partner for this sort of stuff considering they are buying it’s bespoke hardware.

Uber to pay millions to settle claims it ripped off disabled people with unfair fees

That’s doesn’t negate taxi’s globally from being a grubby CARTEL- including local councils, city authorities, licence/shield issuing bodies, drivers, taxi companies - ripping people off for decades until Uber arrived and gave it a hefty kick in the balls.

SpaceX Starship booster in flames after unexpected ignition

Re: Part of the game

Just have to hope no-one was near/under the launch-pad doing any work.

Re: Oops

https://www.grammarly.com/

I guess they tossed the Editor position during COVID.

UK's Ministry of Defence awards Boxxe multimillion Microsoft license deal

Middleman

With the scale of Microsoft licensing across UK Government - NHS, Defence, Police, Education, HMRC etc … why is the Crown Commercial Service not simply managing this in-house direct with Microsoft and cutting out Middlemen and their margins?

Isn’t that the whole remit of the CCS centralised value driven at scale procurement?? They should be able to get the best price by far without looking elsewhere?

UK response to China's tech ambitions labelled 'incoherent and muted'

Re: Two possibilities

That’s garbage. The UK’s influence waned over the Cameron years but that was due to a policy of disinterest. Prior to that the UK agreed with most EU legislation and was hugely influential in direction.

The UK’s influence through the EU (and external. Non-EU originated stuff it has signed up go like the Council of Europe/ECHR) is massive.

The internal market is a case study in UK influence.

As with most pan-national organisations … you get out what you put in. With a stronger positive outlook/engagement the UK could have outshone the Franco-German EU lead. The UK was late into the EU don’t forget.

Post-Brexit …. Outside the major trade blocks of the US, China and the EU … the UK is a small rule-taker, without influence. The UK is not ‘in’ the CPTPP yet… and what we will get out of it uncertain right now…. but having barriers to trade with your closest neighbouring bloc - as in the EU - will never be recovered by this.

STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries to build wafer fab in France

620,000

What does ‘620,000 wafers a yeat’ translate to into end retail or OEM chippery ???

It’s a (thanks BBC More Or Less) ‘big number’ … but also seems very small at the same time.

Pentagon: We'll pay you if you can find a way to hack us

Re: What sort of payment?

I noted no mention of decriminalising (Ethical) Hacking of The Pentagon

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

Cough … also sourced from Wikipedia.

The first 10 amendments were long completed only by the original 13 colonies/states that were founded after Independence. Go see Louisiana Purchase, Mexican-American War, Alaska Purchase - links provided.

The rest signed up to them after they were added to the assembling United States and I guess the ratification thresholds/criteria were perhaps not given enough thought at the time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican–American_War

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Purchase

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Yet SCOTUS overturned New York’s 100 year old gun restriction/carry legislation in a flagrant act of hypocrisy and wilful blindness of legal precedent.

Everyone back to the office! Why? Because the decision has been made

I can’t remotely think JRM would know what to do with a pint of (Ugh. Northern) OP.

With where his Parliamentary Constituency is I would peg him as a Somerset Pomona man with a Local Drink for Local (Gentlemen) People.

UK govt promises to sink billions into electronic health records for England

Re: "backed by £2 billion [..] in funding"

Your fate of tax has little reflection on the costs of COVID which is largely more debt being serviced.

It’s fine up a bit, but the insane levels were there before.

Re: "backed by £2 billion [..] in funding"

Well you can buy a PCR Fit to Fly for £49 retail inc the certification service so that reflects the actual real cost.

As T&T were doing in bulk and in-house, if their costs were anything more than this you need to be asking about procurement again.

E-Mail

Something simple and effective like being able to send my GP Practice a fucking e-mail would be nice.

Intel ships crypto-mining ASIC at the worst possible time

Re: The sooner, the better

Money laundering HSBC too ??

https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-news-for-jan-29-hsbcs-money-laundering-scandal-hbc-scbff-ing-cs-rbs0129.aspx

Re: Almost California Gold Rush redux

ROFLMAO

I hope no Government subsidies used for the fab making this shit.

Intel’s CEO shouldn’t be surprised America can’t get CHIPS Act together

… where does foreigner (heritage) purge stop ?? At Eskimo’s and (American) Indian’s ?

Will you also revoke the Louisiana Purchase, American/Mexico War, Alaska Purchase too and back to the true Core (ex-British) America when the Constitution was codified ??

Re: Wow, the pressure.

That’s not socialism…that’s the difference between employment and servitude. Even the US/Canada have some employment rules- just nit enough… hence recent Apple and Amazon unionisation victories.

Question - has EU membership and workers rights damaged German competitiveness, and global reach ?? Say for example ownership of the North American International Trucks business via Navistar -> Traton -> Volkswagen AG or Mercedes and Freightliner/Western Star/ThomasBus and the ubiquity of BMW and Audi vehicles in USA.

Re: Wow, the pressure.

“Europe is socialist”…. Can you evidence that ??

We’ll happily have an Intel Fab in the UK. I would not say our Clown/Fuckwit of a Prime Minister and his appalling Government are remotely Socialist.

Start using Modern Auth now for Exchange Online

Re: Will be a..

Is Office 365/Microsoft 365 ‘Exchange On-line’??

Methinks not… and that leaves hundreds of millions of domestic and business users no further forward.

Enabling MFA for my elderly Dad’s iPad to continue receiving his ISP’s ‘free’ e-mail hosted on Office 365 makes me cringe. He still doesn’t remotely understand CAPTCHA by comparison.

Intel to sell Massachusetts R&D site, once home to its only New England fab

Subsidies

Perhaps they can offer the proceeds up as a down payment into Chips for America funding??

Soviet-era tech could change the geothermal industry

Re: what if ...

Broadly the ploy synopsis to StarTrek (2009) reboot.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(film)

Re: How deep?

Cost/benefit - if doable reutilising an existing Coal Station all your infrastructure already in place. Oil/gas far harder to send to customers (as end products) too.

If new v’s capital of nuclear, solar, wind, tidal, hydro and legacy coal/gas (new shipped in from origination) costs.

Restructure at Arm focused on 'non-engineering' roles

Re: Road to hell

ESP. As reported they both want to sell it, yet retain control.

Arm says its Cortex-X3 CPU smokes this Intel laptop silicon

Re: Girding of Loins

Well Intel acquired Alpha and with Compaq as it’s partner in crime shut it down in favour of Itanium.

With Intel’s other catastrophic mistake of flogging it’s XScale/StrongARM business … the rest is history… helping lead to Samsung, NVidia,TSMC, Qualcomm etc and the rise of the non-Intel mobile chippery (now encroaching on desktop, server and edge) domination and Itanium being a dead end.

Hangouts hangs up: Google chat app shuts this year

Why??

“

"Moving to Google Chat opens up new and better ways to connect and collaborate," product manager Ravi Kanneganti said in a blog post. "For example, users can edit Docs, Slides or Sheets with side-by-side editing, making it easier to collaborate while continuing the conversation.”

… no-one wants to do this. Over complicated all-in-one apps suck ass.

Text, pics, animated gif’s, video, hyperlinks - is all required.

Oracle lands London council deal for £12m ERP project

Over budget, under-delivered, troubled

Spin forward 2-3 years.. I expect to see the usual Council ERP project disaster.

There should be a common UK-wide micro, small, medium, large and metro ERP template with approved suppliers with working/certified solutions doing the standard things councils do with interfaces to the same other agencies all councils need to speak to.

Come back former Government agencies like CCTA - latterly OGC - who would have provided this sort of support - not purchasing framework led crap like Cabinet Office.

Intel is running rings around AMD and Arm at the edge

Re: Nothing to see here

At the very edge you will have an army of CCTV, home routers, Alexa enabled devices, SmartTV’s, set-top boxes and Mobile phones all running ARM.

Edge is a meaningless cover-all term for this useless specious article… I presume originated from some SuperMicro press release ??

Misguided call for a 7-Zip boycott brings attention to FOSS archiving tools

Re: I like 7Zip.

“ How many did the West kill and murder in Iraq based on lies?”

Simple answer - quite a lot.

A fuller and more honest answer is absolutely nowhere near the vast number killed by years of Moslem on Moslem (Shia v’a Sunni) sectarian violence, mullahs with private militias, violence stirred and funded by various external actors (Iran mainly), the latter impact of the perversion of Islamic State, violence against ethnic minorities (Kurds/Marsh Arabs) by majority Moslem groups.

So corrected that for you.

Yes Bush/Blair were so dumb for. It having a post- is Rory strategy…. but they enabled that, it caused it. Much like most of the Western Leaning world’s shameful, enabling appeasement and inaction enabled and emboldened Assad and Russia in Syria… which cause and effect has rolled forward to Crimea and now Ukraine War.

Back-to-office mandates won't work, says Salesforce's Benioff

Most people don’t have a London Weighting. That’s an incorrect perception/falsehood.

Amazon fears it could run out of US warehouse workers by 2024

Re: Amazon own goal

Pay more, better benefits, stop treating your workers like shit (and stop obstruction of them wanting to unionise - a symptom of the first 3 things).

After that your staffing problem pretty much goes away.

Intel demands $625m in interest from Europe on overturned antitrust fine

Re: We are talking

The WTO wheels turn just as slow. Look at the Boeing/Airbus debacle on whose subsidies received were bad/market disrupting.

FUCK OFF

Intel … please just F-U-C-K O-F-F.

… and we’ll give your money grubbing subsidies to Samsung or TSMC instead.

SpaceX staff condemn Musk's behavior in open letter

Re: Dear Employees,

Like that’s gonna stop him :-)

Re: Dear Employees,

… inevitably it’s heading towards a Musk Presidency bid.

That being said Musk 2024 is infinitely preferable to Trump 2024.

Atos CEO resigns after board proposes splitting the company

Re: Bonkers

- Split the company

- leverage debt back onto the 2 successor businesses to finance it

- pay yourself handsomely with the cashflow lolly the debt generates

- fuck-off and exit the business before you get rumbled

OVHcloud datacenter fire last year possibly due to water leak

Re: I hope Bond escaped in time

A handful of large gravel and few cans of expanding foam filler in the outside heat exchanger fan units will screw it permanently for you. Nothing sophisticated needed

Western Digital open to spinning out flash, hard disk businesses

Re: mmmm...I wonder what their plans are?.

WD Own Sandisk.

Re: Genuine Question

I guess it would leave SSD’s but the commonality of product set and procurement/economies of scale in memory for the non-spinning discs makes no sense by breaking this up.

A grubby private equity/debt money-scraping exercise only.

Intel to get $7.3b for Germany fab site as TSMC dismisses Europe plans

Re: Long range vs smash n grab

Plenty of consumers yes… for retail boxed output.

Not so many on the manufacturing supply chain of servers, laptops, tablets, phones, graphics cards, motherboards etc.

Most of the EU IT/technology/consumer electronics manufacturing shut up shop and relocated to the far east quite some time ago… causing the now self-evident security of supply/manufacture - highlighted by Covid, Ever Given/Suez and Ukraine.

Enemies Waymo, Uber now friends making self-driving-ish trucks for US highways

Re: Choppy waters ahead

This is all about admin, capacity, restricting choice and little to nothing about autonomous driving.

A little gas could be saved - but like delivery drones - over-blown benefits and in narrow circumstances….Good luck trying to pull off the motorway/freeway with the lane being blocked by an autonomous convoy slipstreaming !!

Dear Europe, here again are the reasons why scanning devices for unlawful files is not going to fly

I’d argue with point 3) as (for many alleged crimes… not just murder) often the suspect is viewed as a danger or a flight risk so put into jail ‘on remand’.

If they are innocent.. their life is effectively destroyed by implication, loss of job, loss of income.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remand_(detention)

It was reduced/made consistent to 16… however Peter Tatchell - a prominent Gay Rights advocate - on the day but changed caused mass outrage by immediately petitioning for the age of consent to be reduced to 14.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/sep/24/sex-under-16-underage

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-61228240

Just England and Wales….. but affecting everyone where the actual target was arranged/forced marriages in certain Ethnic Communities.

The Blacksmith’s Shop in Gretna Green is again the place for young English/Welsh lovers to run away too.

Unsure how a legal marriage in Scotland/Northern Ireland would be viewed in England/Wales.

So you can shag (in any way you want) a 16 year old…. but not take a picture/video of it and not marry them until they are 18… (or drive a car until age 17)

Aligning all 3 (or 4) at a consistent age - across all of the U.K. Home Nations - seems reasonable to me. Esp. as most global organisations view ‘a child’ is anyone under 18 - inc UN declaration on the Rights of the Child.

US Supreme Court puts Texas social media law on hold

Re: preclearance for unconstituional state laws?

Fully agree…. However this analysis is dydiect from the article

“The law, signed in September by Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R), and promptly opposed, forbids large social media companies from moderating lawful content based on a "viewpoint," such as "smoking cures cancer" or "vaccines are poison" or hateful theories of racial superiority. Its ostensible purpose is to prevent internet giants from discriminating against conservative social media posts, something that studies indicate is not happening.”

Discriminating against *bollocks* social media posts. The fact that Conservative posts ping the correlation does not imply causation bell is purely coincidental.