Posts by TheSirFin

$16B health dept managed finances with single Excel spreadsheet. It hasn’t gone well

One to send to Team New Zealand?

Well worth a light-hearted, tongue in check read ... I read it every time Spreadsheets are brought up!

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-dropkick-you-if-you-use-that-spreadsheet/

Britain enters period of mourning as Greggs unable to process payments

Re: Ok adding my not so consipracy take...

Come on then.

Out with the massive list of promised Brexit benefits that have been realised Grumpy of TB?

I definitely won't be holding my breath.

btw ... a democracy votes and changes it mind all the time ... its not a one off point in time. But you type never understood that.

And now ... I await your vast list of Promised Benefits Realised ....

(and with blaming anybody else if they haven't been ... With you lot, its "always somebody else fault" ..Immigrants/Woke/Tofu .... you have been in power for 8yrs since Brexit... Own the Sh1tSt0rm of Failure & incompetence you cuased!)

European Space Agency to measure Earth at millimeter scale

Good .. but Lisa is going to be even better!

I think this accuracy is a taste of things to come.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/29/esa_lisa_experiment/

"" The plan is to send three spacecraft, trailing the Earth as it orbits the Sun, forming a highly accurate equilateral triangle in space. Each side will be 2.5 million kilometers long, and the spacecraft will exchange laser beams over the distance.....This is where those laser beams come in. By firing beams from one spacecraft to another, scientists can determine changes in masses' distances down to a few billionths of a millimeter.""

A few billionths of a millimeter of a distance of 2.5 million KMs .....

What a cool mission to be part of.

Re: It seems

1000 Thumbs for this one!

And despite all the new accuracy .. they still won't find any.

Cant find anything that doesn't exist!

Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk's mega pay package

When I call a Plumber

Seessshhhh ... this all sounds very amateur hour.

When I call a plumber and ask him what his rate is, and how much it will cost for a job.

I cannot imagine not asking a Law firm what they are going to charge to take EM to court to do him out of $56B.... ???

Software troubles delay F-35 fighter jet deliveries ... again

Re: Once Upon A Time At Hawker-Siddley...............

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

you mean like the Bradley Fighting Tank?

Aircraft rivet hole issues cause delays to Boeing 737 Max deliveries

Flying Blind

This is all you really need to know about he sad demise of Boeing.

It started 25yrs ago ... but its just taken this long for those particular birds to come home to roost.

Brilliant book of investigative journalism from a Seattle native.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flying-Blind-Tragedy-Fall-Boeing-ebook/dp/B08SGZ3916

NASA engineers scratch heads as Voyager 1 starts spouting cosmic gibberish

Petunias

I think its trying to tell us about the bowl of Petunias its just passed to starboard but can't quite find the right words.

#agrajag

Techie fired for inventing an acronym – and accidentally applying it to the boss

Re: Well that was unfortunate.

Nice!!

"Im afraid we cannot have the meeting today SUE has gone on a PICNIC"

I am stealing both of these for use my with my Lazy Susans!

The UK's bad encryption law can't withstand global contempt

Re: making it a crime to use strong encryption

20yrs for each of the Tory Cabinet sound about right? We can only hope.

£2B in UK taxpayer cash later, and still no Emergency Services Network

Re: Who and where be the bigger idiots at large, feeding dreams with nightmares writ large ??? *

An equally correct modern day take on this would be ....

*......“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average UK Politician.”

Wannabe space 'superpower' UK tosses £1.6M at eight research projects

the one thing we can definitely say about this government is that is has zero gravity, about this or any other topic it spouts forth on!

Twitter rewards remaining loyal staff by decimating them

Neither :-)

This turkey is going to crash and burn!

And I have a big bag of mastodon marshmallows which I am looking forward to toasting!

Wow, so they actually let AI fly an F-16 fighter jet

Maverick?

Yeah ... but could it beat Maverick?

If so ....Top Gun 3 is going to be really really s**t...

The Twitpocalypse may have begun, as datacenter migration reportedly founders

Re: The solution to this problem is exceedingly simple, and is being overlooked by everyone...

this covers it for me .... but I wear it with pride!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8vHhgh6oM0

And Felon sure ain't and engineer!

Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement

Lettuce MacLettuceFace.

I cannot believe that the Outstanding Luttuce who ousted Liz "I cannot believe its not Lettuce" Truss did not get on the list.

I cannot think of a single better item that could get all the calls right and put the "Software and Server" Tech lead in his place.

The Lettuce is Dead . Long Live the CEO Lettuce.

Apple preps for 'third-party iOS app stores' in Europe

Update <1%

I am pretty confident that the update of this will be very very limited.

The average iPhone user (me included) will not have any truck with this sort of feature.

Excel's comedy of errors needs a new script, not new scripting

Re: From "Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors" by Matt Parker

Great book. Another great read, which is full of such reference is "Science Fictions" by Stuart Richie. (Royal Society Book of Year nominee. Check out the of Austerity study by Reinhart and Rogoff. Global policy to implement Austerity (especially Tory UK) was based on a spreadsheet that an error in it. If you fix the error (as they did in 2013 ... it shows that Austerity should not have been the chosen route. horrific .....

After deadly 737 Max crashes, damning whistleblower report reveals sidelined engineers, scarcity of expertise, more

Re: 1 vs 3

yes you are right John! I am blaming Auto-erect .... sorry auto-correct ;-)

Re: 1 vs 3 - a story from the techncial diving world ....

This is a great point for debate .... well ... not 1 vs 3 ... that is a no brainer ...

But 2 Vs 3.

its been going on for 20yrs in the rebreather diving community.

We have galvanic O2 cells in our closed cuircut rebreathing loop. They regulate the partical pressure of O2 in the loop. Too little, we die ... nicely. Too much, we die ... horribly. So it does focus the mind.

Problem with O2 cells is they are desiged for surface pressure, medical equipment. Not 5-10atm being halled around a boat in the north sea full of salt water. So they fail, regularly.

So, early manufacturers started putted 3 cells in (at great expense) and used simple voting logic to decide what our O2 reading were. Trouble is ... cells could and would fail at the same time due to being in same batch and subject to same conditions ... therefore you get 2 duff votes, but as they agree, you still die. DOH!

Poseidon have come up with a new solution .... and only uses 2 cells. Not for voting, but for redundancy. In their design they validate both cells against konwn conditions thoughout the dive (every 3mins) by blowing pure O2 over them an watching the electrical responses. If readings are good, you continue your dive, if either cell misbehaves, it is ignored and the good cell is used to keep you alive while you start your dive abort process. (If both fail, its kicks you off the breathing loop to a completely redundant Open Cuircuit backup ... a 2nd plane if you will!)

Sorry for going on ... but I do like Poseidons approach and its the unit I dive. It would be interesting to work out a way if Piezo tubes could somehow be re-designed to allow realtime validation against a known state mid flight? (James Bonds Q style gagdet comes out of plane and covers the tube completely and uses compressed air at set pressue to mimic a given air speed) .... as you can tell, I more at easy under water than above it ;-)

Good debate thou!

Cheers!

Get the Grey Army back in Service?

The regulators could of course, employ - on a part time consultancy basis - retired Airbus staff to QA Boeing ... and retired Boeing staff to QA Airbus ... then sitback and enjoy the sparks! Rotate them around regularly to avoid over familarity ... and retired European engineers woudl get to spend some time states side, and visa versa! Paris is nice in the Spring? ;-)

[Tongue firmly in cheek here!]

Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

Bang On - except the death stats

This is a very good article and the thrust is bang on the money .... its where my head has been head as been at since I became semi-cognizant.

I agree with everything in here.... and I was about to "out" myself to my green friends by sharing this article with them .... but I cannot, as the stats around nuclear deaths - which I really cannot believe, as you have to factor longer term or attributable deaths/suffering - undermine the rest of the article.

Clean that bit up, and mention how the volume of waste is significantly reduced with the new designs, and how it can be dealt with ... and then you have a article that I would happily share far and wide!

Great first draft .... cheers!

Big data: Study suggests even a moderate gambling habit is linked to increased mortality and other bad stuff

Re: "the study is silent on these factors"

A good chuck of the money not handed out goes to funding Olympic medals at the expensive "sitting down" sports (cycling, sailing, rowing, riding)s o we can all indulge in a bit of 4yrearly flag waving .... which I guess is still a lot better than it going to the unfit fatcats at BedFred etc ;-)

IBM puts NIST’s quantum-resistant crypto to work in Z16 mainframe

Re: CRYSTALS-Dilithium

"hhhmmmm .... Crystal Dilithium have you then .... yes"

Amazon tells folks it will stop accepting UK Visa credit cards via weird empty email

Amazing Blind Spot by the Reg

Cant believe you got thou the entire article without mentiong the real reason for this debacle ..... which is Brexit and the removal of the EU legistation Cap on credit card fees in the UK!

You didn't even get as far as musing why Visa payments are not being wtihdrawn in any other EU countries?

In this instance you are almost doing as well as the Brexit Blindspot Coporation in relation to not spotting the elephant in the room!

Please do keep up Reg, we trust you to do better than the traditional sources with their associated political and financial pressures.

Feeling saucy? Wave of Microsoft releases includes go-live licence for .NET 6

Great Choice

Bit of a random comment, but just want to congratulate Il Reg staff on the choice of picture to go with the article.

1. You chose a female surfer getting barrelled .... awesome shot

2. You chose one where she had a full wetsuit and not a bikini on. That shows a nice touch of class.

Thank you Folks for not going for the standard skimpy bikini girl clickbait photos that are so pervasive elsewhere.

(posted as a grumpy old surfer who works in tech)

Radioactive hybrid terror pigs have made themselves a home in Fukushima's exclusion zone

I welcome our new Pig Overlords,

I welcome our new Pig Overlords, as I am 100% certain they would do a better job of running the country then the current spaffing lump of bacon!

Pressure builds on Nominet as members demand to know leadership's contingency plans for when they’re fired

Call in the Big Guns

I hope they get Jackie Weaver to chair it and record the session for widespread public consumption! ;-)

Easyjet hacked: 9 million people's data accessed plus 2,200 folks' credit card details grabbed

from Franco-German manufacturer Airbus??

Really Il Reg?

If it was funny, I wouldn't mind..... but its neither accurate or funny ..... so do please try again?

Its headquarters, are in the Netherlands, the three largest countries involved are France, Spain and Germany, followed by UK and many other European countries ..... so maybe try something like "Euro-Bloc Flying Fortress" etc ......?

There, that wasn't so hard now was it? ;-)

UK snubs Apple-Google coronavirus app API, insists on British control of data, promises to protect privacy

Re: Difficult choice

Worth having a listen to this podcast ........ really interesting to hear how both approaches work .... and not a surprise that the Gov have gone on the Slurping route ....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hgj3

Maersk prepares to lay off the Maidenhead staffers who rescued it from NotPetya super-pwnage

Maersk have lost ther way-point

Shame to hear that about Maersk, from what I had hear they were a good company to work for.

Seems they need to remember this (bastardised) lesson:

"Treat your Staff like Pets, and your Containers like Cattle"

Home Office cops an earful for emergency network feck-ups - £3bn overbudget and 3 years late

Re: up 49 per cent on first estimates.

Dont worry, Grayling hasn't got his hands on it yet...... but when he does, you can add a zero to that 49%

Boeing big cheese repeats pledge of 737 Max software updates following fatal crashes

Re: Criminal Negligence and/or Corporate Malfeasance? Those are a Rock and a Hard Place

I agree. But one thing that will make for even more uncomfortable reading for Boeing Execs, Shareholders and fans, is that all 3 possible warning systems which Boeing had designed to alert of possible malfunction of, or pilot conflict with, said MCAS system were ALL additional extras on the both the Max 8&9 aircraft. Neither of the two aircraft that have crashed had any of these systems installed**. In fact, a recent pilots report from American Airlines suggests they may be the only carrier who has selected them. How such critical alerts could be "optional extras" given the number of stripped back, bare bones carriers out there is a galling commercial decision for any company to have taken. This, more than anything I feel will be highlighted in all the reports written on the causes of these tragic events. [** Source: AvTalk Podcast No53, produced by FlightRadar24. Worth a listen].

Wanted: DVLA CTO. Must love cloud, open standards, agile – and retiring outdated kit

Id say they are selling the fact that you can live and Gower as a big perk to the Job! I did a 6 year stint there and it is a pretty cushy lifestyle!

NASA's Opportunity rover celebrates 15 years on Mars – by staying as dead as a doornail

Given that this is the same Rover that drew a massive C**k and B4lls on The Red Planet the instant it landed, I wouldn't be surprised that this extended sleep is some sort of weird Nasa punished for the little fella!

A few reasons why cops didn't immediately shoot down London Gatwick airport drone menace

Paw Patrol has the answer

Cant believe nobody has built Chases net from Paw Patrol. Its the only answer.......

Guess I am off to the shed to build it then.....

Back in a mo!

Big data at sea: How the Royal Navy charts the world's oceans

Its alway been this way!

Surprised that people (including the author) are surprised by this. The RN has been surveying the worlds oceans from its very inception! That is what all the great famous Captains spent most of their time doing on their voyages of discovery. Accurately charting the worlds oceans and sending them back to the Admiralty. With charts come power and with power, wealth and a lot of the "success" of the Empire was built on the back of skilled navigator and survey creating accurate sea chart for others to follow! The Article should really reference his long history of surveying as a RN skill.

Chinese biz baron wants to shove his artificial moon where the sun doesn't shine – literally

Its called Pegasus and its made with conflict diamonds from West Africa.

Apple hands €14.3bn in back taxes to reluctant Ireland

I Presume that it is the fact that Ireland is playing he long game, and knows that keeping Apple happy and in Ireland long term, is more beneficial than a one off windfall and risk them pulling out ??

VPNFilter router malware is a lot worse than everyone thought

Sky Hubs

Any body know who makes Sky Hubs that they use here in the UK?

Just wondering if we are vulnerable.....

cheers.

TSF

Max Schrems is back: Facebook, Google hit with GDPR complaint

won for now ...... defeat is never final, and victory is never eternal!

US citizen sues France over France-dot-com brouhaha

This has happened before - just agree a reasonable price for it and for one dont feed the lawyers!

From Wikipedia:

"Online

In 1994, The Irish Times established a website called Irish-times.ie; it was the first newspaper in Ireland and one of the first 30 newspapers in the world to do so. The company acquired the domain name Ireland.com in 1997, and from 1999 to 2008, used it to publish its online edition. It was freely available at first but charges and a registration fee were introduced in 2002 for access to most of the content. A number of blogs were added in April 2007 written by Jim Carroll, Shane Hegarty, and Conor Pope. On 30 June 2008, the company relaunched Ireland.com as a separate lifestyle portal and the online edition of the newspaper was now published at irishtimes.com. It was supplied free of charge,[36] but a subscription was charged to view its archives.

On 15 October 2012 John O'Shea, Head of Online, The Irish Times, announced that the ireland.com domain name had been sold to Tourism Ireland, and that the ireland.com email service would end on 7 November 2012. The domain name was sold for €495,000. The ending of the email service affected about 15,000 subscribers.[37]

The newspaper announced on 17 February 2015 the reintroduction of a paywall for its website, irishtimes.com, beginning on 23 February.[38][39][40]"

Europe wants cloud giants to cough up data from anywhere in 6hrs

Warrants

No mention in the article of warrants......... back in the day, and int time honoured hollywood police dramas, The Cops were always waiting for a warrant from a Judge, so they could 'do the wire tap'. Igoring the technical fiasco, its does appear from this article, its just a "give the cops whatever they ask for' sort of legislation with no checks and balances.......?

Elon Musk invents bus stop, waits for applause, internet LOLs

Frickin' lasers

Brilliant! You just need to add a "giant frickin' Moon LASER" to his list, and he needs to start dressing like Dr Evil! oh, and he also needs a few pet, ill tempered sea bass as pets!

'Quantum supremacy will soon be ours!', says Google as it reveals 72-qubit quantum chip

Re: Hitchhiker is on again soon

or, in Googles case, the Infinite Profitability Drive.......

GRAPHENE: £120m down, UK.gov finds it's still a long way from commercial potential

Here is one very nice usage:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v540/n7633/full/540319a.html

As feature in BBC Inside Science Podcast on November.

Also Italian firm Vittorio spending a lot on graphene in tyre manufacturing.

Jury still out on that thou.