* Posts by balrog

38 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2016

Abandoned AWS S3 buckets can be reused in supply-chain attacks that would make SolarWinds look 'insignificant'

balrog

Re: Reverse Authentication

There are ways to do this already. The issue is not an Amazon one, its that people are not using the facilities there already.

balrog

Re: What!

I think its more how you set up your privileges when you build your S3, if you allow access to everyone with no security Amazon says if thats what you want. For some use cases that could be fine, say a document repository.

It may be lazy developers who point the 'update url' in their app to a named S3 instance much as they could to any domain name. Once the domain name has lapsed you can buy it and do much the same.

Singapore says Nvidia's astounding local sales don't mean it's the source of DeepSeek's GPUs

balrog

Re: Tesla FSD and bus lanes...

You haven't had it flag 110 as the limit yet? Watch that happen when it sees a 110KMh sticker on the back of some other vehicle.......

Apple and Meta trade barbs over interoperability requests

balrog

Meta are so dodgy they make Apple look good. Wow.

UK Royal Mint mining PCBs for precious metals in e-waste recovery effort

balrog

50 Million Tonnes?

Around one tonne per person? Seems unlikely

Boeing to reacquire spun-off supplier Spirit AeroSpace to shore up safety

balrog

Re: Lessons not learned

Correct but you just got the timescale wrong, the move on happened a few years ago. The art of fucking like this is to exit while you can smell of roses. I'd look at 'retirements' and those 'looking for future challenges' from 4 or 5 years ago if you really want the arch manipulators here.

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

balrog
Stop

Re: 400 volts through the chassis

I think most EVs still have a 12v system, complete with canbus and maybe even a 12v lead acid battery, so that all the accessory items are off the peg bits from bosch! The high voltage DC supply will be separate with a positive and a neutral as this can not run in the same place as the 12v.. A three phase motor doesn't need a neutral, with three phase 'neutral' is the same as all phases connected (draw the phase diagram, add the amplitudes and watch them sum to zero, noodle fried yet?). So I can not see where either of the high voltages would be connected to the chassis but there is plenty of power in the 12v to start a fire.

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

balrog

Re: What is/was that saying?

BOEING; Bits Of Exit In Numerous Gardens??

Zuckerberg hunkers down in Hawaii to wait out apocalypse

balrog

What these type of people dont realise.......

....... is that even after some sort of apocalypse this sort of thing is staffed by locals. And locals loyalty is only available when they need you. So come apocalypse day whats to stop said locals booting Zuckerberg out on his arse to allow more space for their actual friends and family. Even those special 'security consultants' are going to be bright enough to see which way the wind is blowing.

Bezos might beat Musk to Mars as NASA recruits Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket

balrog

Re: Nothing much to be missed if lost.

Oh its way more likely to be an August than 2024.......

Apple lifts the sheet on a trio of 'scary fast' M3 SoCs built on a 3nm process

balrog

Re: We need a new metric

He doesn't use a M series mac in an office environment and thats obvious. We use Studios in our err studio. And we hammer photoshop so I whimpered and paid out for 64Gb when we refreshed. Anyway a while later I needed to hire a couple to cover some temps and could only lay hands on 16Gb minis on an M2. And they are plenty fast enough for what we do. Best we dont let the bean counters find that out. In the mean time I'd bought more macs always upping office users to 16Gb. The last couple I got with 8Gb and we find them perfectly fine for MS Office/FileMaker/general use. Modern apple hardware does have some issues, heat in the intels, somewhat mediocre build quality, poor port selection and lets not even mention the keyboards but the tightly integrated processor, memory and ssd is not one of them.

What did the VisiCalc fairy bring you for Spreadsheet Day?

balrog

Anybody ever use Keep It Simple Spreadsheet (KISS). I quite liked it as it used more structured table data where you would apply a formula in a flow chart type arrangement to generate a new table. Sounds clunky but I thought it elegant and possibly a step between a grid of boxes and a database.

Hell no, we won’t pay, says Microsoft as Uncle Sam sends $29B bill for back taxes

balrog

And before that refusing to pay those who stopped the pesky French invading them.

Lawsuit claims Google Maps led dad of two over collapsed bridge to his death

balrog

Re: Were there no signs indicating that the Bridge was out?

In the Uk I believe the highway code, and thus the law, says something along the lines of 'drive at such a speed you can stop in the space you know to be clear'. Obviously going on to state an exemption for all Audis.

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

balrog

Deere oh dear oh dear....

John Deere are the poster boy for the lease it and tie them in. And the most interesting development in that is a tractor company restarting production on a model explicitly allowing you to change and adapt their product. The question that raises is there a car market big enough for a similar swing?

Aliens crash landed on Earth – and Uncle Sam is covering it up, this guy tells Congress

balrog

Re: Not impossible, just ludicrously unlikely

This I very much doubt. If you can travel through space that sort of distance what do you get from Earth? There are limitless sources of resources open to that level of tech. Which leaves religious or ideological idiocy. I rather hope that was something we had monopolised.

China debuts bonkers hybrid electric trolley-truck

balrog

I can see this kind of thing working until batteries catch up with what we want. Charging on the go is a must though as fitting this wiring through junctions with lane changes is going to be impossible. Maybe it needs combining with 'teaming' vehicles so the maximum number of vehicles can be charged and moved at the same time.

balrog

Re: Nice until

Oh no, Germany are living off massively underpriced exports as the likes of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal hold the value of the Euro down. I mean it comes at the cost of the Greek youth but never mind.

Tesla eyes Nevada for Semi electric truck plant, battery factory

balrog

No trucker was involved in that design....

Suicide doors and a central driving position? Nobody who has ever hooked up a trailer is going to like that. Also the likely weight is not ideal in the UK, we could use it as a lot of our trucking is under max weight, but its a real big deal in the US where their max weight is way lower.

Just 22% of techies in UK aged 50 or older, says Chartered Institute for IT

balrog
Thumb Up

Re: hmmmm

I resemble that remark

Elon Musk issues ultimatum to Twitter staff: Go hardcore or go home

balrog

Re: Tonight's Headline

Also 50% are only below average if you use the median, the more commonly used method, mean, has no such indication. I would suggest 90% of people are below average intelligence, one pointer being the inability to do basic maths

Russian 'Minecraft bomb plot' teen jailed for five years

balrog

Re: Guilty as charged

In 97 I was sacked (well bullied into resigning) by Kingston University for sharing that with a colleague I rather naively imagined a friend. Or at least friendly enough to scan through it and discard it as more of a liability to yourself than others.......

Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the BBC stage a very British coup to rescue our data from Facebook and friends

balrog

Re: BBC

My tory friends say the BBC is lefty, my lefty friends say its tory. brexiters say its remainer, guess what the remainers say? I reckon as long as the BBC upsets everybody one way or another it could be doing worse.

European Commission redacts AstraZeneca vaccine contract – but forgets to wipe the bookmarks tab

balrog

Re: confidentiality clause

nobody died from the vaccine. 0.1% of covid infections lead to death. You do the math.

'Literally a paperweight': Bose users fume at firmware update that 'doesn't fix issues'

balrog

Has Bose stuff ever been any good? I haven't really been into hifi in a long time but it was B&W price with Amstrad performance. Always looked nice though.

If you're going to exploit work's infrastructure to torrent, you better damn well know how to hide it

balrog

Oh the simplest solutions are easiest, remote desktop to an HR weenies machine and install torrent there. A couple of searches in how to up privileges on their machine helps too. Jobs A Goodun.

For real this time, get your butt off Python 2: No updates, no nothing after 1 January 2020

balrog

Re: The fork is already out there

Oh my I was so unaware that anybody else would share my interest into why π is used when 2π is more often a useful value. I am elevated, relieved and have achieved a zen like sense of inner calm. Thank you.

Sure, we've got a problem but we don't really want to spend any money on the tech guy you're sending to fix it

balrog

Re: Travelling to client sites

There is one way to avoid jet lag. And its quality.

What you do is get flung half way round the planet to fix some bit of kit in a third world shit hole. But you promise to fix it outside office hours, obviously at a higher rate. So you turn up wherever work 'nights' locally then head home.Of course if you get it right you can time it so you are awake the same times you would be at home........

Can't view memes on London-Southampton train? It's the worst line for mobile coverage

balrog

Surely HS1 to Ebbsfleet is worse

Copper feel, fibre it ain't: Ads regulator could face court for playing hard and fast with definitions

balrog

I dont give a f* if its two cups and a piece of string as long as I get the speed I paid for; they are arguing over a semantic irrelevance and have missed what consumers want entirely.....

Developer recovered deleted data with his face – his Poker face

balrog

Re: " Yep. Though he did DO the backups, so that's fine."

Apart from pesky Russians encrypting your hard disk and your backups......

Sorry, Elon, your Tesla roadster won't orbit for billions of years

balrog

Re: 1 Billion or 1 Million, seriously who bloody cares?

Starman was the corpse of David Bowie

Long haul flights on a one-aisle plane? Airbus thinks you’re up for it

balrog

Re: The Golden Age of flying is over

I am a short man. I also dont have a leg below my right knee and two replaced hips. 11 hours sat bolt upright is agony, so reclined I go. Off course if somebody doesnt want to let me recline I am the only person on board with a 12 inch long blunt instrument.......

F-35 flight tests are being delayed by onboard software snafus

balrog

Actually it all runs on PowerPC so I am thinking this Is OS X for Aircraft.....

balrog

This falls squarely into Damo's first rule of deciding to get involved in projects. If the market is small and the complexity high it will always end in a bun fight. Opinions being like arseholes, ie full of shit and hot gas, are best avoided on these topics.

In America, tech support conmen get a mild slap. In Blighty, scammers get the book thrown at them

balrog

Its perfectly logical, run you scams in the US and live in the Uk where the health care is and the guns aren't. Have your extradition lawyer on speed dial

What's losing steam at Apple? Pretty much everything

balrog

Could you see jobs ever being happy with the stupid female to female charger for the pencil? And no clever clippy thing like the MS surface???

balrog

You are lucky, my 17" died and now I have a 15" MBP. It plays nicely with my other stuff but if I had time to learn something new I would have ditched Apple for computers. Now my music is on one external disc, a load of other crap on another disc because 512Gb doesnt cut it and 500 quid to upgrade to a TB that still isnt enough is extortion.