* Posts by Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese

1852 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jul 2014

UK finance minister promises NHS £3.4B IT investment to unlock £35B savings

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

Re: Cynical? Me?

I think the key word here is "potential", as in if we fritter away £999,999,999 on pointless consultants, then stick that last quid on a horse with odds of 3.5 billion to 1, it could potentially win us £3.5B

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
Unhappy

Zero sum game

"costs £3.4 billion but it helps unlock £35 billion"

It's a large-scale, government funded project, so will obviously end up costing 10x the original budget, so that leaves you with a modest saving...probably enough to cover the costs of the Public Accounts Committee enquiry into why it went 10x over budget and to issue a statement about lessons learned, yadda yadda yadda...

Odysseus probe moonwalking on the edge of battery life after landing on its side

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

Re: Failure is an option

The success of all lunar exploration missions should be judged on style, control, damage and aggression.

Cybercrims: When we hit IT, they sometimes pay, but when we hit OT... jackpot

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

Re: What does OT stand for here?

OT = Operational Technology (as per para 2 "Operational technology security firm Dragos [...]")

Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Why do they need a submarine?

Indeed. I think that a lot of times that undersea cables get damaged, the cause is from anchors.

I know of at least two companies who provide a service for monitoring shipping movements/behaviour with a view to identifying potential subsea asset damage.

Microsoft Publisher books its retirement party for 2026

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

I feel a great disturbance in the force...

...as if a million parish newsletter editors cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Twilio reminds users that Authy Desktop apps die next month – not in August

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

What if app isn't an option?

I know of at least one organisation using Authy for 2FA in locations where mobile devices are forbidden for security purposes - only desktops/laptops accessing the network via wired LAN. Could be interesting to see how they cope when the desktop app ceases to be.

Damn Small Linux returns after a 12-year gap

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

Re: Cool, a new toy to fiddle about with.

Older, still working, kit such as netbooks etc,

Indeed. I've got an old WinXP netbook kicking around, which I think I need to finally admit is at the end of its useful life, so may be a candidate for installing DSL on. I'm not convinced that I'll have a valid use case for it once it's installed, so would largely be doing it for the heck of it, but sometimes that's sufficient justification.

Europe's deepest mine to become Europe's deepest battery

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

You jest, but a few years ago there was a leisure centre somewhere in the UK that was using waste heat from a neighbouring crematorium to heat the swimming pool. I think the scheme stopped after some public outrage (personally I thought it was an OK idea, but the way people reacted you'd think they'd proposed using ashes from the crem to top up the kids' sandpit)

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
Coat

Pedant alert: if your uranium is sufficiently enriched as to sustain a chain reaction, it doesn't stay in a big pile for much more than microseconds

Further pedantry: ...unless that pile is the Chicago one

Please install that patch – but don't you dare actually run it

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Coat

Re: Uptime

UPS caught fire? That gives a whole new meaning to "hot standby"

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
Devil

Re: Nine nines and an explosion

Presumably his thought process went as far as "what would be the best number of uptime?"

My assumption was that his thinking was "have you exceeded the minimum uptime of 24/7? Then no bonus for you!"

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Nine nines and an explosion

Indeed...'absolutely no downtime' and 'nothing can be switched off' do not work together. If your goal is zero downtime, then you need to have redundancy to allow for unplanned failure, which means you do have the option to switch things off or restart them as and when required.

The literal Rolls-Royce of EVs is recalled over fire risk

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

Re: Required edits:

'British marque's' -> 'German marque's'

Indeed...does the "the Rolls Royce of [x]" really mean what it meant years ago? Now that it's "the super-luxury arm of BMW of [x]" is the quality really the same?

Legacy tech shoots down Ministry of Defence's supply chain improvements

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

I'm sure there was a quip in Yes Prime Minister along the lines of "if we want to know the state of UK defence forces, it'd be easier just to ask the Russians"

Travel app Kayak offers Boeing 737 Max 9 filter after that door plug drama

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Re: Have they never heard of flanges

I believe you speak the truth. The Mentour channel on YouTube had a good video on this, with some explanatory diagrams and whatnot....worth a watch

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

Re: The bigger question

I think at this point, every aircraft that came out of Boeing in the last few years needs to be completely disassembled and put back together with proper inspections this time.

Given Boeing's track record, I think it'd be a case of disassembling all aircraft , putting all aircraft put back together, and then selling all of the spare bits they have left over at the end.

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

Re: When a company

The aviation industry works on a principle whereby incidents are investigated and causes identified so that similar incidents can be avoided in future. If the cause of this incident is down to use of incorrect size bolts then this is worrying because I'm sure there was an incident many years ago where a window (cockpit windscreen?) parted company with the aircraft mid-flight due to being "fixed" in place with incorrect size bolts. Whatever procedures were put in place as a result of that incident don't seem to have been observed here.

Junior techie had leverage, but didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
Boffin

It would seem logical to install a heavy equipment as low as possible

Indeed, but the minion was "told to put the UPS in the lowest free space in rack number one of seven". They may have taken "lowest" as meaning lowest number with slot numbering going top-to-bottom rather than lowest meaning nearest to the ground.

I know from experience of dealing with people who are 'on the spectrum' that they can tend to interpret instructions in a way which is technically correct but not what others would intuit.

Fujitsu will not bid for UK.gov business until Post Office inquiry closes

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Unhappy

It's a small pool of companies that go after these government contracts. Fujitsu's withdrawal will just mean more business going to Capita or Serco, tant pis.

Nearly 200 Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes grounded after door plug flies off mid-flight

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

"Safety is our top priority and we deeply regret the impact this event has had on our customers and their passengers,"

That's the first item in the bingo card ticked off

New cars bought in the UK must be zero emission by 2035 – it's the law

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

target of having six or more rapid or ultra-rapid electric vehicle chargers at every motorway service area in England.

Considering how long it takes to charge an EV, compared against how many fossil-fuelled cars go through the pumps at a service area within that same timeframe, a minimum target of 6 chargers feels ridiculously low

UK government lays out plan to divert people's broken gizmos from landfill

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Re: disposable vapes

The worst example of non-componentisation (is that a word? it should be) that I've seen was the electric fire that was fitted in my Dad's house. After a few years the LED do-dah that provided a warm orange glow decided to stop working. The landlord ended up replacing the whole fire as the LED do-dah was an integral unit and couldn't be replaced. Unbelievable...back in the day it was simply a case of changing a bulb.

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

Re: How many

Mandate that the battery can be changed with 1 watchmaker's screwdriver and some patience

I get misty eyed and sentimental about the times when all you needed to to was unclip the back cover of the phone in order to swap the battery. No tools and minimal patience required.

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

Re: disposable vapes

I'd question the cigarette butt analogy. Cigarette buts are pure waste and really only fit for the bin, but as you point out the so-called disposable vapes still have a perfectly re-usable rechargeable battery and heating element.

Big Clive has made a number of videos about scavenging disposable vapes from the gutter and harvesting the batteries for use in other projects.

They're just crying out for recycling rather than discarding to landfill.

HMRC launches £500M procurement for new ERP, though project's already a 'red' risk

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Coat

£214M vs £500

HRMC said the total baseline whole-life costs of the project would be £214 million. The tender notice put the maximum value of the procurement at £500 million

So before even starting, they're saying that the procurement value will be double the expected whole life costs? Have government departments learned nothing from previous large-scale procurements?

Obviously it'll go over budget by way more than just two times.

Is it 2000 or 2023? Get ready for AI-anchored news. Again

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
WTF?

Out of curiosity I googled for ananova and found that there's actually still a news website with that name. Looking at some of the articles, I can't decide if they're real or generated by a bad AI. Take this for example...

https://ananova.news/prince-harry-duke-of-sussex-and-the-royal-family/

Veteran editors Notepad++ and Geany hit milestone versions

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

What you said, but it was UltraEdit in my case

Tech renders iconic rockers Kiss genuinely immortal

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Re: Age does not matter in 2025s!

Judas Priest just dropped a new video a couple of days ago - they're going since mid-1970s too!

Their lead singer has recently released a duet with Dolly Parton, and she's been on the go since before the mid-70s

Government and the latest tech don't mix, says UK civil servant of £11B ESN mess

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Devil

Re: Hot Air

Earlier this year, the prime minister launched the UK government's plan to cement the nations place as "a science and technology superpower by 2030."

Earlier this year the prime minister remembered that he had friends who own science & technology companies, and so would benefit from being given some government-funded work.

Remember when the Hubble Space Telescope was more punchline than science powerhouse?

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Thumb Up

I've always struggled to get my head around the fact that HST was built on the ground under laboratory conditions, and all the relative luxury of a ground-based exercise, but still had a fault....yet it was fixed so quickly in the challenging environment of space.

Hubble science instruments still out after going down 3 times in a week

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It was last serviced in 2009

Jeez...my car starts nagging me if it's gone more than 12 months without an oil change

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

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Re: bullshit detected

From an engineering viewpoint, the two most definitely don't fit.

Based on my experience with some engineers, any two items can be made to fit...if they don't, then you just need to use your hammer some more.

US nuke reactor lab hit by 'gay furry hackers' demanding cat-human mutants

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Re: Idaho National laboratory

https://youtu.be/yQ9IOEpGlr4

Tesla, Musk likely aware of Autopilot deficiencies behind Florida fatality, says judge

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Coat

Re: Victim Responsibility?

Not merely a video, but allegedly a Disney animated movie.

Is that supposed to be some sort of Mickey Mouse legal argument?

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

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Re: Content Providers Need To Be Paid

'Influencer' and 'content creator' are not synonyms. The so-called influencers are creators of content, but they are a subset of the overall pool of content creators and (IMHO) tend to give content creators as a whole a bit of a bad reputation.

Much of the content creators out there on YouTube are just people who are passionate about a subject and want to share with viewers. As an example off the top of my head....Big Clive. He likes making videos teaching about electronics, and I've learned a ton from watching him. I don't begrudge him a penny of his ad revenue.

Characters like Pewdeepie, Mr Beast, et al....it's a big "meh" from me.

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
Unhappy

I have a monetised YT and allow some ads to be placed on my videos, as I use YT as an income stream.

Until now I've tried to balance the placement of ads against user experience - happy to have a small banner ad at the bottom of the screen for a few seconds at the start of a video, less happy to have anything more intrusive like full-frame ads which interrupt the video.

Unfortunately YT are removing the option for creators to select ad types to use, and are pushing for more ads on videos, so I expect that more of my content will be interrupted with skippable and non-skippable ads, potentially in the middle of videos. I don't think that non-creators realise that YT are doing this, and worry that viewers of my channel will hold it against me personally that my content is now more ad heavy.

You can buy personal info of US military staff from data brokers for just 12 cents a pop

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Facepalm

Re: Talking about personal data

I've seen stories before about how in-theatre bases were easily identifiable from apps like Strava, Map My Run, etc. - military personnel with GPS trackers take their daily exercise by running laps of the compound, and upload a graphic description of the boundary to the various fitness apps for all to see.

Microsoft 365 Copilot 'generally available' – if you can afford 300 seats

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Re: Hardware Requirements

"It looks like you're trying to defend the Atlantic Wall - would you like some help with that?"

Microsoft says VBScript will be ripped from Windows in future release

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Re: It's an abomination, but...

I've always been of the opinion that anything that can't be accomplished with Excel's built-in conditional formatting and formulas should not be handled in Excel.

Indeed, even things which *can* be accomplished with those basic features should not be handled in Excel. I have memories of a customer who used to use Excel as a word processor.

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Stop

Re: It's an abomination, but...

I think that discontinuance of VBA could be a bad move.

For better or worse, Excel is very pervasive, and I expect that pretty much every commercial and non-commercial organistion has at least one critical process underpinned by a shonky spreadsheet with some super-shonky VBA in there, which nobody really understands any longer, but it works.

If an Office/Excel or Windows update suddenly stopped them from working overnight, then I fear the collapse of western civilisation.

Scripted shortcut caused double-click disaster of sysadmin's own making

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Facepalm

Re: Is there anyone

Memories of a colleague back in the day, when we used 3.5" floppies quite extensively. He was muttering and grumbling and someone asked him what the problem was. He said that all he was trying to do was format a floppy disk so he could re-use it, but his computer had started asking loads of "are you sure?" type questions. Unfortunately he made the final confirmation a split-second before someone asked "are you sure you didn't type 'format c:' ?"

Human knocks down woman in hit-and-run. Then driverless Cruise car parks on top of her

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Re: Ai Dillema

VSauce / Mind Field actually did a very good pseudo real world trolley problem exercise on YouTube.

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Pint

Re: Interesting that the police

Good info - have one of these (but not before driving, obvs)

Volkswagen stuck in neutral after 'IT disruption'

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

When I was talking about the mess they made of the software in my Golf, and I hadn't even got as far as thinking about the privacy angle...I was thinking about the fact that it exhibited at least two bugs on every single trip (the entire dashboard spontaneously rebooting mid-journey, radio, etc. completely failing to work, display locking up....like I said, an absolute s**tshow

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Facepalm

"an attack from outside is currently unlikely,"

Sounds plausible. Given the absolute s**tshow that VW made of the software in my Golf, I can totally believe that they have the ability to stuff things up technologically using their in-house (in)capabilities.

Switch to hit the fan as BT begins prep ahead of analog phone sunset

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Re: Plug into back of broadband hub

provided whatever is at the other end of the fibre still has power

Based on personal experience, I'd say that's a fairly bold assumption.

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

Re: What's the worst that could happen?

BT network off and cell towers down? As I mentioned in a comment of my own a bit further up the page, I've experienced that on a number of occasions when a power cut has hit the village (and surrounding area) where I live.

The outcome of the real world experiment? Isolation for days, if not weeks, on end. Unable to communicate, with impact up to and including people having domestic accidents or succumbing to the cold (these things tend to happen more when you don't have the luxury of light and heat) and being unable to contact emergency services.