Posts by Red Ted

Digital overhaul at UK's NS&I bank is £1.3B over budget and 4 years late

Project Rainbow

The title tells you everything you need to know about likely outcome of the project!

Aviation watchdog says organized drone attacks will shut UK airports ‘sooner or later’

Just a few co-ordinated phone calls reporting a drone sighting over an airport will shut the airport.

With care you could even do it without phones by saying loudly in a public area "isn't that a drone over there?" and all those far away lights will suddenly become rather closer drones, in peoples imagination.

Rocket Lab's Neutron slips to 2026: 'Our aim is to make it to orbit on the first try'

Angry Alligator

The Spectre rocket was in turn inspired by images of the "Angry Alligator" that Gemini IX was meant to dock with but the conical nosecone shroud hadn't separated, so they couldn't.

Gemini IX Crew Found ‘Angry Alligator’ in Earth Orbit

The crew did suggest trying to knock it off, but that was deemed to risky!

YouTube's AI moderator pulls Windows 11 workaround videos, calls them dangerous

If I recall correctly

It should be written in 1pt font in white on white, probably at each paragraph break.

Microsoft gives Windows 11 a fresh Start – here's how to get it

App search

My main gripe is that the app name search is rubbish.

If I type "cube" it suggests a few random files with cube in the name, but not the "STM32CubeMX" application that's installed on the machine. To find that I have to remember that it starts "STM..." and then it finds it.

Ubuntu Unity hanging by a thread as wunderkind maintainer gets busy with life

Obligatory XKCD

That person in Nebraska

ESA engineers trace anomaly in silent Juice spacecraft to a bug in the code

Re: Wait, what am I missing...?

So how do the engineers have fifteen months until a six-month timer wraps around again?

Because it's a sixteen month wrap around, not a six month one.

I do rather hope that a software engineer somewhere is now writing "I must unit test all my timer functions" a hundred times on a chalk board!

A back of envelope calculation suggests that they used a 32bit int to count 10ms ticks.

Apollo 13 hero Jim Lovell has taken his final orbit

Re: Apollo 13 oxygen tank failure

Here's a case study in to the failure, which is quite an interesting read and rather shorter than the full blown NASA report.

My attempt at a summary of the case study:

They had originally put this tank in Apollo 10, but then took it out again. In doing so they did the classic engineering error of talking all but one of the bolts out before trying to take the shelf out with the tanks on.

The lifting equipment (rather than the bolt) broke and everything got rather shaken up.

Then they retested everything and tank 2 didn't want to empty its oxygen out.

So, they encouraged it with the heaters (which is what they are for).

However they used the 65V Ground Control Equipment supply instead of a 28V one (the supply to the heaters on the Apollo were 28V).

The thermostats in the tank didn't enjoy being run at the higher voltage and failed closed circuit, so the heater didn't turn off as it should have done at 80degF (27degC) and could have made it up to 1000degF (540degC).

After that it was all rather FUBAR.

Linux kernel 6.16 lands without any headline features but 38M lines of code

Re: "world's most famous Finn"

Yes, he was, sorry. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet! I realised a couple of minutes after the edit window closed.

"world's most famous Finn"

A few might disagree with that (although I realise this is probably the wrong forum to make this point)!

They've got four times World Rally Champion Juha Kankkunen; three F1 World Champions: Keke Rosberg, Mika Häkkinen and Kimi Räikkönen; the composer Jean Sibelius; the author Tove Jansson; film maker Ingmar Bergman, to name but a few.

Orbital datacenters subject to launch stress, nasty space weather, and expensive house calls

Re: Really, cooling is considered "easy"?

One of the simple vacuum sensors is just a heater and a temperature sensor. The systems puts a constant power in to the heater and you measure the temperature, which increases as the pressure drops, because the heater cannot be cooled by convection, just radiation.

Struggling to sell EVs, Tesla pivots to slinging burgers

Re: Probably as good as the McDonalds at Alconbury?

Ah splendid! A bit like the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain.

Probably as good as the McDonalds at Alconbury?

Really futuristic it was too!

Under-qualified sysadmin crashed Amazon.com for 3 hours with a typo

Where's the original Reg story?

I can fine these:

Outage hits Amazon sites from Nov '99.

Amazon unavailable for holiday shopping madness from Dec '04 which seemed to drag on for sometime afterwards.

Would Ken care to comment?!

The Smoot – How an MIT prank became a lasting unit of measurement

Re: the thickness of screw threads was not fully standardized in the US

Having an interest in vintage vehicles, I seem to have developed rather more knowledge of thread systems than I really wanted to. So my early 1950s British motorcycle uses all of the following:

Whitworth (British Standard Whitworth - BSW) - Developed by Sir Joseph Whitworth and modestly named after himself. The hexagonal heads and nuts were quite chunky and in the early 20th Century nuts and bolts were being made with the next size smaller head.

British Standard Fine (BSF) - Developed in early 20th Century with a finer pitch than Whitworth and using the one size smaller head, but otherwise the same.

British Association (BA) - A metric system that starts at 6mm OD and 1mm pitch and then goes down in a geometric progression (as the BA number increases). Whilst the smallest used is typically around 16BA, you can calculate the dimensions of 20BA or even 100BA. When adopted by the British all the dimensions were specified in inches!

Cycle Thread - Mostly 26TPI regardless of size.

British Standard Pipe (BSP) - I suspect we've managed to inflict this on the rest of the world and almost the opposite of BA it's now specified in millimetres.

Although the British have now moved to the metric system there are still gotchas, such as the Japanese using a slightly different (finer) thread for some sizes!

As you can probably tell, I'm an absolute blast at parties (if I were ever to be invited to one)!

Ordnance Survey digs deep to prevent costly cable strikes

Fraught with difficulty

There are so many reasons for this being a massive challenge.

First up is that not everything that was done has been recorded. As an extreme example, some of the drainage systems in York were built by the Romans (what have they ever done for us?), so good luck asking the emperor where the GIS data for it all is! As well a the general poor record keeping that probably gets worse the further back in time you go. The work on the Botley Road Railway Bridge in Oxford has suffered from this in a big way.

Next up is that some infrastructure was variously defined as strategically important, so its location was not public knowledge (this is where the myth about the Post Office Tower in London being a secret location comes from - spoiler alert: it wasn't, it was marked on the public OS Maps).

Finally you have muppets who don't check (or trip over one of the above problems) and put their drilling machine through the infrastructure. See: Olympic cock-up knocks East London off Internet in 2009 and Obstruction of a tunnel between Old Street and Essex Road stations where the design of a building above a railway tunnel had several of the pilings going through the railway tunnel!

'Elevated' moisture reading ignored before Heathrow-closing conflagration, says NESO

Well, we all know about "low probability"

That'll be the "million to one" chances that happen "nine times out of ten"?

Thank you, the late great TP.

Meta offered one AI researcher at least $10,000,000 to join up

Re: Requires 20 years experience

“Kansas is going bye bye”

There, two film references!

AI coding tools are like that helpful but untrustworthy friend, devs say

IP Protection?

"One good method for dealing with the inherent flaws is to start a session by prompting the agent to review the codebase structure, documentation, and key files, before then giving it the actual development task"

Am I alone in reading that as "pour your IP in to the AI that belongs to someone else"?

Old but gold: Paper tape and punched cards still getting the job done – just about

Re: Fascinating stuff

Minoan Linear B script perhaps?

Currently the oldest understood European language. It was preceded by Linear A and a hieroglyphic script, but they are currently undeciphered.

User unboxed a PC so badly it 'broke' and only a nail file could fix it

Re: Office relocations

Some numpty at IBM once managed to get the RJ11 modem socket next to the RJ45 network network socket on certain models of laptop. Those using them with dialup (this was a few years ago) were forever managing to plug the RJ11 plug in to the RJ45 socket and spending some time wondering why they couldn't connect and then finding that the landline didn't work so they couldn't phone Tech Support to help sort it out!

Intuitive Machines blames dim lighting and dodgy data for second lunar faceplant

We collected the most detailed imagery of the lunar South Pole on mission two

"Most detailed" because the camera was facedown in the lunar regolith?

As US scientists flee Trump, MP urges Britain to do more to nab them

Americans and Brits speak dialects of English that are almost mutually comprehensible

"Two countries separated by a common language" is, I think, the quote you are looking for!

Brain-inspired neuromorphic computer SpiNNaker overheated when coolers lost their chill

Re: Auto-Slowdown/Shutdown Systems

Snow at Easter isn't unknown.

In the UK it is statistically more likely that at Christmas.

Please sir, may we have some Moore? Doesn't look that way

Re: Coders have to code

On a course about C++ aimed at C coders where a number of us worked in embedded systems, the presenter said "code as is up have limitless compute and storage"!

He looked hurt when a significant fraction of his pupils laughed at him.

Windows 11 poised to beat 10, mostly because it has to

Trying to make 2025 the "Year of the Linux Desktop"?

The first of my home machines has now moved to Mint and the other will probably follow suit before the October deadline hits (although it could go to Win11, but my experience of it at work has put me off that idea).

Also, enough of the tools I use have Linux versions now and for the small number that don't, Wine seems to "do what it says on the tin".

ISS resupply and trash pickup craft postponed indefinitely after Cygnus container crunch

Perhaps they shouldn't have used Evri to ship it?

I expect there was an email to say they couldn't deliver as no one was in at the Space Center when they arrived, or perhaps they just stuffed it behind the bins?

SpaceX's 'Days Since Starship Exploded' counter made it to 48. It's back to zero again now

Re: Bodge job

The new SpaceX corporate song: Harmonic Generator by The Datsuns!

Scotland now home to Europe's biggest battery as windy storage site fires up

Re: Back of the envelope

The UK has four pump storage schemes in use: Cruachan (440MW) and Foyers (300MW) in Scotland, and Dinorwig (1800MW) and Ffestiniog (360MW) in Wales. These give a combined storage of 32GWh.

Work has started to upgrade Cruachan to 1000MW (using the same reservoirs so the storage capacity doesn't change).

Another one is probably going to be built in Scotland, the Coire Glas Project, which would provide another 1300MW, but with a capacity of 30GWh (full power for a whole day) and there are a couple of others that are at the proposal stage.

UK government insiders say AI datacenters may be a pricey white elephant

Non-infrastructure development

The (British) government's record on development of anything outside infrastructure seems to have a really poor record.

Picking aviation as an example, I give you R101, the Brabazon and Concorde. Interestingly at almost exactly 20 year intervals.

Boeing going backwards as production’s slowing and woes keep flowing

Hitchhiking in space

Hitch-hiking or summoning an Uber are not options in space

They must have lost their Electronic SubEther Signalling Device or “Electronic Thumb”?

Mine’s the one with the ‘guide in the pocket…

Microsoft declares 2025 'the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh'

Re: Micros~1 declares 2025

In my case Win11 is finally the push that moved me to the Linux desktop.

Enough of the tools I use are now available on Linux, so that's stopped being the blocker it was and the small number that aren't seem to work ok under Wine.

Apple's backwards design mistake and the reversed capacitor

Re: Picture looks odd.

They *are* different pictures. The perspective of the two connectors changes from one to the other.

I think the damage is visible in the first picture (if you look at the high re copy), but the corrosion has run between the copper and the green solder resist. The silk screen is on top of that so appears undamaged.

The solder resist and silk screen probably came off when the board was brushed with flux remover after desoldering the caps.

Re: Ahh, silkscreens

"It's very easy to put all your big decoupling caps in a row, beautifully aligned with the positive bar at the top and curved negative side pointed down. Then you slap a bunch of GND at the bottom and slap in the power net labels at the top... Forgetting that one is negative and needs to have the cap flipped. Sails through review because everyone focuses on the "hard" sections and it just looks right."

Yes that's my take on this too. Has anyone found a copy of the schematics yet?

As the +16V rated capacitor had -5V across it and there was little load on that circuit it wouldn't have been picked up in Design Verification.

The "fun" begins when you swap the electrolytic for a tantalum. These are much more fussy about polarity and I have had the through hole version vaporise the orange body (with a suitable "bang!") on power-on, leaving you with the challenge of finding the two legs poking out of the PCB with no tell tale scorch marks to give you a clue that they aren't just a couple of test pins!

Google to wrap up Christmas Island with new subsea cable

Cartographers unite!

There are just so many things wrong with that diagram supplied by Google!

Mysteries in polar orbit – space's oldest working hardware still keeps its secrets

Re: Photon Propeller

Just to be pedantic (and I know that's uncommon around here) it is a Nichols radiometer as it is radiation pressure that provides the force.

Photon Propeller

The photon propeller that keep it rotating so as it is evenly heated by the sun, is very ingenious too.

There are four VHF/UHF antenna that are painted black on one side and white on the other, so the difference between the absorption and reflection of the two sides imparts a rotation force on the satellite.

EU buyers still shunning pure electric vehicles, prefer hybrids

Plug in hybrids

Some evidence seems to suggest that these are a bit of a failure, as they are often not plugged in.

This results in it behaving as a (non plug in) hybrid with the weight and cost penalty of a bigger battery and the power converter for the external power connection.

Pirate programmer walks the plank for role in massive TV streaming operation

The classic argument

The court heard that the operation affected every owner of a TV show in the US, costing millions of dollars in losses to the industry.

My understanding is that these losses were from the lack of royalties for streaming the programmes. Which, as with Napster et al, all those years ago, raises the question of would the people using Jetflix have paid to watch those episodes via legitimate means? For certain, a percentage of the subscribers were using Jetflix to get the episode on the cheap, but there would have been a significant fraction who simply would not have watched the programme at all, which could be argued that it is not lost revenue.

Brit telcos to clash in high-speed mmWave spectrum showdown next year

Re: 3G Auction

why not just say "this is the price of the licence to use this portion of the spectrum"

Because it is very difficult to decide the correct price for something when it is such an unusual market. It wasn't the open market situation with lots of trades of a similar commodity that you could use as a reference point. An auction isn't a bad choice for finding that level in that particular scenario.

Also remember it was at about the peak of the dot com bubble and so money was (almost) no object. Then the bubble burst and reality set in.

3G Auction

Reg readers with long memories will no doubt recall the 3G license auction around the turn of the millennium, when the UK's mobile operators almost bankrupted themselves trying to outbid each other for the available spectrum.

Am I supposed to feel sorry for the telcos in this instance, and by implication that the British Government shouldn't have done it?

Personally, I feel pleased that the British Government managed to make that much money out of them. It made a change from all the stories of how they always overpaid public listed companies for services and represented the single biggest payment against the national debt.

SpaceX Dragon gives ISS a helping hand with altitude

Re: 7/100 of a mile

The next common imperial units down from the mile are the furlong at 1/8th of a mile (220yards) and the chain at 1/80th of a mile (22yards).

So 0.7miles becomes about 6 furlongs and 0.07miles becomes about 6chains.

For greater precision you can combine with the next unit down (like you do with specifying someone's height in feet and inches) so the 0.7miles should be correctly described as 5 furlongs 6 chains and 0.07miles should be described as 5 chains 13 yards.

There is a sub division of the chain in to the Rod (also called the pole or perch) which is 1/4 of a chain so comes out at 16.5feet, but is not too useful here and is considered archaic.

Simples!

Babbage boffin Ada Lovelace honored for computer science contributions

Maybe she only used binary...

No, the Difference and Analytical Engines worked in decimal, which meant that any storage location had to store ten different states.

When Konrad Zuse designed the Z1 mechanical computer (a century after Babbage had worked on the Analytical Engine) it used binary, so each storage location only needed to be one of two states and that simplified the mechanism.

I do recommend going to see the Z1 replica in the Deutsches Technikmuseum.

Disney kicks Slack to the curb, looks to Microsoft Teams for a happily ever after

"Teams is horrible."

Seconded.

Need to move 1.2 exabytes across the world every day? Just Effingo

Re: Updated for the modern era ...

microSD cards would be the way to go, rather than tapes.

Conveniently, Randall Munroe has done the sums in a What If?

Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience

Re: Who, me?

Thank you so much for your confidence in me, but it was a typo!

On reflection it does work rather well though, “reds under the bed” and all that!

Re: Who, me?

I think you'll find it's that "rouge engineer" who previously worked for VW diesel emissions control department and then at Boeing developing the MCAS.

Raspberry Pi OS airs out some fresh options for the summer

...you can choose your Wayland compositor

Umm, what's a compositor, and why would I need one?

I realise I am starting to sound like Mel Smith in the HiFi Shop Sketch from "Not the Nine O'Clock News" all those years ago!

Switzerland to end 2024 with an analog FM broadcast-killing bang

Radio 3 bandwidth

Radio 3 has 192kb/s allocated to it, the most of any DAB channel.

The other BBC radio channels are mostly at 128kb/s.

Most commercial stations are squashed down to 64kb/s.

How many Microsoft missteps were forks that were just a bit of fun?

Don't mention Visual Source Safe

"I did once, but I think I got away with it!"

I think I might have PTSD from trying to maintain a VSS repo in a previous job. I'm not going to go in to the details of why it is so awful, as it may trigger an "episode"!