Posts by Doctor Syntax

Texas blacks out, freezes, and even stops sending juice to semiconductor plants. During a global silicon shortage

"And lacking in outdoor space."

Which is a problem if you're depending on a heat pump extracting heat flux from the area you don't have.

Re: "reach out" *barf*

"Curtailed" also appears to have changed its meaning.

"Other way round, the asked those with generators to switch over and those without to shut down."

To be fair the quote in the article was a bit obscure: "Those of our customers who have backup generation, we curtailed them." Just what does "curtailed" mean? In the context it seems to have meant that they excused them from a cut but without taking context into account it reads as if they were given short shrift.

Re: Dinorwig?

And it's only there to handle sudden changes of demand whilst more generation is being spun up.

"Most Texan homes are not kitted out for arctic survival and apparently many homes were internally sub-zero if you did not own a log/gas fire."

It doesn't need weather stopping generation for this to be a problem. A local cable fault can have the same impact. We had an outage of about 15 hours at the beginning of December, That knocked out the central heating but we have gas fires and a gas hob so we could keep warm and prepare hot drinks and food. But as HMG policy is to ban dual fuel in new builds that's a problem stacking up for the future. However if it's a problem that only becomes serious in a future electoral cycle it doesn't matter as they can go into the next election waving their green credentials.

It depends on whether the diesel is formulated for low temperatures. I remember one of British Snail's worse attempts to get me home one evening. The diesel for the signalling generators has curdled in the cold weather so the Chiltern Line stopped running.

Hero to Jezero: Perseverance, NASA's most advanced geologist rover, lands on Mars, beams back first pics

"Designed to last about 30 Martian sols,"

And far, far beyond that if previous NASA engineering is any guide.

Looking forward to another successful mission.

Facebook bans sharing of news in Australia – starting now – rather than submit to pay-for-news-plan

"Google has no choice but to pay."

They have. They can ignore sites where they'd have to pay. I'm surprised they're not taking that tack.

Re: What is the Fuss ?

"The same address box that's sending every keystroke to Google?"

You let it do that, do you? What browser are you using? That can have an effect.

Seamonkey - can choose search engine or turn it off completely.

Waterfox - can choose search engine but don't see a quick way to turn it off completely even when a separate search engine is set. Can be set to forget history

Palemoon - similar to Waterfox

Firefox - As per Waterfox & but all sorts of Pocket stuff as well

Re: The Chinese and Koreans would be proud

"Dangerous when gvmt and it's media buddies control the news"

Also dangerous when the media control their govt. buddies.

Re: Interesting take on this

If you remember, there was a similar argument about Google News in Spain, where Google said "fuck you" and shut down Google News entirely in Spain.

Didn't this also happen in Germany & that didn't go well for the German publishers? Maybe it depends on national characteristics - amount of information in the snippets on the publisher's side and willingness to click through by the users.

Toxic: Intel ordered to pay chip fab worker almost $1m after he was gassed at its facility in 2016

Reactions such as Intel's are for too common. Courts should react by reopening the cases, demand an explanation and, if not satisfied, double the award and add a matching fine for contempt of court. Repeat as needed if they still complain until either they're bankrupt or somebody catches on to the consequences of repeated doubling.

Nurserycam horror show: 'Secure' daycare video monitoring product beamed DVR admin creds to all users

"Yes they do, and it's a _vicarious_ liability (which means they're liable even if they weren't aware of it)

Don't forward it to the nurseries"

The nurseries are the people to forward it to in the first instance, pointing out that they're using a product which opens them up to GDPR complaints from the parents. If they don't react then forward it to the parents. The probably non-technical but responsible nurseries will realise their problem and tackle it at stage one. It's the ones who don't who deserve a GDPR case against them at stage 2.

I wonder what they'd do if someone took "legacy non-functional codes" [sic] that were "there to distract hackers" literally and twiddled a few of these non-functional codes to not change the user IDs and passwords - which they obviously can't change if they're non-functional. At a guess scream that they've been hacked.

FortressIQ just comes out and says it: To really understand business processes, feed your staff's screen activity to an AI

Anything - absolutely anything - to avoid doing the right thing:. going to the staff who actually do the work and talking to them. Why should any MBA expect staff on such lowly pay-grades to know how the business really works?

The usual process is to get a consultant to do that; he will charge a fee large enough to make the whole thing reassuringly expensive. Now, of course, it's got to be the fad de jour, AI.

Nominet claims effort to replace its board with 'safe hands' is invalid, refuses to put it to member vote

Re: 2021's Brassneck Award goes to.. Nominet!

"Hopefully these antics may be raising a few eyebrows in government as well."

What part of government?

Companies House is the regulator as far as company matters goes. It's an agency, i.e. a body enabling HMG to stay at arm's length. I'm not sure they have the right to take an interest until there's a complaint made to them about the board.

But who authorises Nominet to run the registry? Does govt grant them this? If so do they come under Ofcom for regulatory purposes?

Are they authorised by ICANN? If so then it sounds like a case of birds of a feather. Even if that's the case there should still be a case for making them answerable to Ofcom. They're just too significant a part of infrastructure to be left alone.

UK tax collector won't probe businesses for compliance with IR35 rules unless there's reason to suspect naughtiness

I suppose not carrying out investigations avoids any risk of discovering that CEST had charged too much.

Re: Customers

Or take your business elsewhere.

Between them those are two test sufficient to decide whether "customer" is the correct term or that something more appropriate should be used - say "victim" or "prey".

LastPass to limit fans of free password manager to one device type only – computer or mobile – from next month

Re: LessPass

The immediate problem with that is that it generates the passwords on the fly form data such as login ID. One function of KeyPass and, presumably others, is to store not only the password but the login ID and maybe other needed information - such as the exact URL and other stuff such as answers to security questions.

Re: KeePass

Or your own NextCloud. That way the sync doesn't depend on any external provider at all.

Re: Rebulid?

This may come as a bit of a surprise to you but you can manage passwords on your own devices. KeyPassX does the job nicely. It will also generate passwords that look like line-noise so you can have unique passwords for each service. You need a sync mechanism. In my case it's a Pi running NextCloud.

UK dev loses ownership claim on forensic software he said he wrote in spare time and licensed to employer

"Which should be a salutary lesson to all software developers: if you're working on a personal project, check your employment contract and employee rights to ensure your work doesn't ultimately belong to your boss."

Check it before you sign it.

Re: You only release once??

You're reading a summary of the judge's summary of the evidence. It's possible that those changes were discussed with his employers or the need for them came to light in cases he handled during his employment. Remember two things about judges when reading a case report: they've seen and heard all the evidence and they've got where they are by being smart and experienced.

No egrets: Ardent twitchers fined for breaking lockdown after bloke spots northern mockingbird in his garden

"Joke's on them."

Seems appropriate - after all, it's a mocking bird.

Re: And here I was..

"more interesting than the usual Great tits across the road"

You live in Downing St?

Re: Is the point of a personal interest that you persue it?

"whatever you stand gain from the fine-incurring activity!"

A potentially debititating and possibly fatal disease.

Devuan adds third init option in sixth birthday release

I wonder if they've updated the drivers - must go and take a look.

Meanwhile the old laptop is resetting its W10 (it was ex-demo from ex-Staples - goodness knows what the original HDD had on it) so I can donate it to a school who'd probably have screaming hab-dabs over Linus. I'd forgotten just how long it takes Windows to do anything.... And UEFI - it hasn't even noticed the HDD has been changed and still thinks there's a "Debian" (yes, Devuan) on there.

Voyager 2 receives and executes first command in 11 months as sole antenna that reaches it returns to work

Re: The sad, but perhaps quite probable thing

Only as a non-functioning spacecraft. It will run out of power.

It depends on the energy provided by the decay of a radioactive isotope. The nature of radioactivity means that in order to provide that energy the isotope decays into something else. As time goes on there's less radioactive material and therefore less energy. In this case the half life - the time at which only half of the isotope previously there is now left - is 38 years. 38 years was generous in terms of the planned mission. In terms of an extended mission it isn't quite so generous. As it loses power more and more stuff has to be shut down to make use of what's left. At some point everything's gone and it becomes a non-functioning spacecraft.

Kids today. You have to explain everything.

Re: It's a different world

Just so. And I had in mind some yachtsman who, fed up with an owner bragging about his floating gin palace, came out with the fusion powered gas turbine line.

Re: It's a different world

And nuclear power was contributing to the GB grid in the 1950s. But for the efforts of self-styled environmentalists who unwittingly unthinkingly promoted fossil fuels there would have been a lot more.

Today, of course, to adapt a quote from a yachtsman, part of our electricity is supplied by nuclear fusion-powered gas turbines.

Housekeeping and kernel upgrades do not always make for happy bedfellows

Re: Versioning - still not an option

"a friend of mine had written one as a never delete filesystem so it's possible to get stuff back."

Assuming you do get it to work you then meet the problem where data absolutely has to be deleted for security data protection reasons.

Re: Just over a billion years ago ...

"I was curious to see how long it would take to lose it's tiny little mind"

We were due to return a loan machine. I'd dropped the database but in a similar fit of curiosity decided to try to ensure everything was overwritten by doing the dread recursive cat that we used to be warned about, starting with a file of ajs[odiJS[IFOJO'[SA style rubbish. I discovered it took far too long. I had to hit the switch so we could hand it back.

Re: I feel for "Aapt"'s pain

"Yes, it is a pain to compile and install complex packages when /tmp is constrained. "

This is why you keep spare space available and use LVM or whatever is appropriate for the OS to adapt to circumstances.

The time to remove them is after they become obsolete, not before, and on a case by case basis.

Re: The secret to intelligent tinkering ....

Draw all visitors' attention to axe prominently labelled "For use in emergencies."

When inevitably asked "Is that for breaking out?" tell them it's for removing any digit that presses a button it's not authorised to press.

Re: Delete is written rename

I've never hit that one. Maybe I'm using the wrong right GUI.

But why clear out /usr anyway? Even if the files were going to be updated the old ones would have been replaced with the new ones. It''s not as if they'd have been left hanging around.

Re: Delete is written rename

That's why GUIs have waste-bins.

Microsoft says it found 1,000-plus developers' fingerprints on the SolarWinds attack

Re: I know why they do it.

"the West of Lothian Free Separatists?"

I question that.

Future astronauts at risk of heart attacks, strokes if radiation allowed to ravage their cardiovascular health

Re: Shields up

I can see at a glance where herman's link goes. I can't say the same for yours. I prefer hernan's.

President Biden to issue executive order on chip shortages as under-pressure silicon world begs for help

"The move comes as leaders from top chip companies urged President Biden to step up efforts to invest in home-fabbed semiconductors for national security reasons."

Probably the cheapest option would be to offer their CEOs and board memberss a mirror each and an instruction to look carefully at what they see in it. It might be necessary to ad an instruction as to which side to look at.

Footfallcam kerfuffle: Firm apologises, promises to fix product after viral Twitter thread, infoseccer backlash

Re: Footfallcam (formerly known as Nurserycam formerly known as Nannycam) Companies House Listing

Somewhat different. Although the name changes in this case it's the same legal entity. Your double-glazing example would be a new legal entity each time so as to evade the responsibilities of the old one.

Paging Ms Steisand

"It's almost as if Footfallcam don't actually know what they're doing at all."

Not at all. It's an extremely generous gesture on Footfallcam's part to draw the attention of prospective customers to this. Without it such prospective customers could make uninformed buying decisions.

Huawei invokes 140-year-old law at England's High Court in latest bid to thwart CFO's US-Canada extradition

Re: Nothing to hide

It's also... _odd_ that she / Huawei can't produce their own copy of the blasted thing. Remember, the suggestion is that this PPT shows Huawei didn't mislead HSBC... so why do they need something that HSBC has?

According to the article she "seeks evidence of internal deliberations within the HSBC Group" not the PPT itself. That would provide proof that the presentation was actually made. Just providing a file without provenance wouldn't be useful - the prosecution could simply allege it had been put together after the non-existent event.

New Jersey blames Microsoft for weeks of outages, glitches plaguing coronavirus vaccine sign-up website

"I would add that the US is the undefeated champion of two world wars and of all declared wars, frankly."

That would be WWI, 1917 to 1918 and WWII, 1941 to 1945?

Dept of If I'd Known 20 Years Ago: Call centres, roosting chickens, and Bitcoin

Re: Call Waiting...

"After over 30 years, I finally threw up my hands and stopped all contact with Redmond"

I didn't know you could be put on hold for so long.

Supermicro spy chips, the sequel: It really, really happened, and with bad BIOS and more, insists Bloomberg

Re: This is so stupid

Would it be too uncharitable to wonder if there's another story about to break with NSA's hands in the cookie jar and they need a create a distraction?

helloSystem: Pre-alpha FreeBSD project chases simplicity and elegance by taking cues from macOS

Re: Global menu bars?

Having thought more about the article it's clear that he's only concerned with optimising one thing - speed to hit controls. There are more factors to be taken into account such as maximising use of screen space.

E.g. labels on menu bar buttons good because it's a bigger target to hit and therefore faster. In fact the space taken up by the larger buttons might be better used to display more on screen which be useful during all the time that the user isn't thrashing about the screen trying to hit buttons. For most users that's probably most of the time.

Re: Further simplicity and ease of use...

Still there in FreePascal and, for all I know, in Delphi. TStringList is the Swiss Army Knife of FreePascal.

Phishing awareness gone wrong: Facebook tries to seize websites set up for staff security training

Re: Where is human decision making?

It's certainly uncommon.