Posts by Chairman of the Bored

World Vasectomy Day: 15k men line up for live vent-blocking

Be damned careful here

Very high side effect profile, ESPECIALLY if you pull a 'me' and go back to work or chores too fast! Very poor circulation down there - infections can get nasty and can be with you for a really long time. As in permanently. I've had to have multiple repeat surgeries just to remove crap from down there. Not quite as much a problem as cancer but its been life changing... Think I'm turning into ... Frankensack!

Seriously, this procedure has one of the worst side effect profiles of any elective operation. Do your homework. And if you're definitely going to get nipped, make sure it's with a doc who specializes in it and have it done in a proper hospital - increases your odds.

Take your time and do research. For most guys in the point of marriage where you are under orders to get snipped, you are not gettin any anyways, so what's the rush? Patience.

My understanding is that male hormonal birth control is under evaluation- definitely a thought.

US authorities swallow security-free script for pill that knows when you're off your meds

Can be useful

Had a migraine episode so bad I couldn't remember if or when I'd last taken painkillers. Kept bouncing from subconscious to somewhat awake and saying 'Man, this hurts. Should take a Tylenol'... reach over to nightstand... take one Clue was running out of pills.

Turns out that your liver becomes really unhappy when you do this.

Universal basic income is a great idea, which is also why it won't happen

Oh FFS

These guys cannot be arsed to have their beloved firms pay their required taxes into the already existing social networks! So what they are saying is basically 'build utopia and we will condescend to join you'. Or not.

Estonia cuffs suspect, claims he's a Russian 'hacker spy'

Of course he's not an "agent"

"Agent" from a services' perspective is a bad guy. What you need to ask is whether the individual is an "intelligence officer". Razvedchik, I believe.

Metal 3D printing at 100 times the speed and a twentieth of the cost

Re: Possibilities

Don't think so... my CRC materials handbook lacks an entry for bovine excrement. That means that I cannot immediately create your replacement politician. First I need to do a research on the material properties of BS first... and my manager will accuse me of "wasting money on materials research bullshit" and lay me off. Damnit! What if HE is ministerial material? Thats a thought. Want him? I need a drink.

Re: Strain and stress

@Evertime; good points but the devil is literally in the details and why a professional engineer won't typically answer a 'is conventional or additive manufacturing better?' question with anything but a 'it depends' answer. One can harden AM printed gears. Surface peening is an option, and is electroplating, exotic lubes, and so forth. Nearly all the materials post processing used for conventional parts are applicable to AM. Of course one can fail to design the gear well and all the king's manufacturing men cannot make a go of it. Or truly excellent mechanical design can make a go of a product even with crap materials and processes- the key being knowing just what quality you have. Or I can overthink my gears to the point where they outlast my otherwise dodgy product and I go out of business having spent too much capital on my lovely gears.

So many tradeoffs... This is why engineering is an art, really - making the best product humanly possible is fun. But making an economically competitive, safe, "good enough" product that users like is both fun and bloody difficult!

Material properties

If you are an engineer seriously interested in material properties of additive manufactured materials, I'd recommend getting in bed with NIST (link: https://www.nist.gov/document-3511) or its UK/EU equivalent.

I haven't worked with NIST on metal AM but know they've got access to just about every polymer printer under the sun and a spectacular set of materials data and at least an equivalent if less mature program on the metals side. For my polymer work the relationship has proven essential.

Absolutely have your prospective vendor print standard ASTM coupons and perform proper materials testing. If you cannot do so in house, materials test houses abound and can provide full traceability. Try different lots of powder. Try powder from the top and bottom of a cartridge. Try powder that is new and some that's been stored right at the margins of its storage envelope. For polymer printers, test parts printed at all corners of the materials' temp and humidity space. You get the idea.

The people I know who do DMLS in a production environment always include two test coupons (x-y and y-z axes) and do at least a basic yield measurement on every single one to catch any process drift. Fatigue strength, hardness, etc are occasionally tested per SPC.

The bottom line is that there is nothing inherent in AM that absolves you of the need for robust processes control. Indeed until many thousands of hours accrue in a given process one tends to keep a weather eye on outcomes.

Note that you generally still need some CNC capability to.clean up parts post-build, no matter what the salesman claims.

Mine's the one the with the 'trust but verify' button on the lapel.

@cray74, truly excellent post.

Ive been using the porous, brittle crap from the 1990's and have actually found it of some use: its good enough for form and fit prototypes. Sometimes we can use it to build mold sets for injection molding. But the real niche is that it makes it easy to build tools and jigs that facilitate conventional production, inspection, and test. Granted the photopolymer printers do this for me a lot more, but sometimes a metal jig that can take some heat and abuse, yet simplifies some other task ("robot" handling PCB in vacuum chamber, reflow oven, etc)

Of course Im benefittting from a sunk cost from years ago. All I have to do is justify the continued tax on depreciated capital equipment. Justifying a few hundred grand on a low end printer to build production gear can be ... difficult.

Don't worry about those 40 Linux USB security holes. That's not a typo

Physical access is physical access ; you've got insider problems

Yes the holes need to be plugged and the number is high. But I give the researchers credit for an enjoyable fuzz job.

Some perspective though... let's say I'm feeling a little evil:

If I want to steal your data I will just grab the HDD. Max 30sec. If I first just do a recon to figure out your make and model then replace like for like on second pass... will you really notice the change or will you just assume the HDD failed? Does your org track serial numbers? I do. Data at rest encryption is your friend here but it is not perfect.

If I want DoS whats to stop me from hacking a usb plug and mains plug into a plug of death adapter? Your motherboard will not survive mains being applied from USBP to USBM. Time to attack? Seconds. Platform independent.

What if I want deniability? Shell of USB stick in parking lot. Guts replaced by photoflash cap charger, cap, spark gap. Either label it as pr0n or an official software install disk. Costa a few bucks and needs only technician skills.

Or what about a kilo mixture of potassium permanganate and glycerine inside... heck, anything you want to experience a Viking funeral (DONT do this at home, kids).

Point is that if someone wants to do you in and they have access, how much can their OS help?

OK, we admit it. Under the hood, the iPhone X is a feat of engineering

Re: 20 layers you say.

@short,

Thanks for the photo; good stuff.

Regarding lack of full pot on assembly, there are a few reasons: with the increased mass comes lower frequency eigenmodes and therefore greater coupling of shock and vibe into your boards and solder joints. Phone design has the luxury of using really small boards with high freq responses- show me a 40cm x 40cm, 20 layer board that does well in shock and I will be truly impressed. 5cm by 10cm not as much.

Thick conformal has a lot of gotchas possible with respect to differential coefficient of thermal expansion stresses... and if you fail to degas it you can get little bubbles giving rise to ideal gas law-driven thermal stresses...

Unless you are doing high voltage or anti tamper a little dab'll do ya. This is one area where "the bigger the blob the better the job" is NOT the way to go.

Re: Confirmal Coating

*laughs* love your Apollo 13 comment and observation. Have an upvote and a brew.

What I find funny here are the people who do a crap job of cleaning boards and then blissfully encapsulate with a great coating and wonder why they get various plagues... or fail to bake out components prior to reflow or high vacuum... so many ways to FAIL! And theb they blame the conformal chemicals...

Boards and coatings

For high performance RF / mixed signal PCBs I don't find 20 layers particularly heroic. What IS novel is being able to make them really, really cheap. Mitigating factors: the frequencies involved in an mobile are not particularly high. The boarda are physically small, which alleviates a lot of differential coefficient of thermal expansion-driven problems. Design lifetime for a mobile is a small fraction of what we need in, say, aerospace or biomedical space.

And then the big gun: modern design and production test methodologies such as halt/hass permits the cheapest possible acceptably robust boards.

Conformal? Almost certainly something like parylene C, applied in a fine (order of thickness... microns) layer through chemical vapor deposition. Used to be only for military / space / biomedical. But if you can afford cvd - and Foxconn can - its What You Do. Perfect control of layer thickness. No meniscus stresses or cte problems - layer too thin. Totally impervious to water and most solvents. You will find the current state of the art uses nanoparticles like aluminum silicide to make the layers hygroscopic.

Two drones, two crashes in two months: MoD still won't say why

Odd.

In the late 90's worked with some decidedly British target drones. Meggitt Defense Banshee 400s. IIRC about 50 grand an airframe. Full authority digital autopilot... radar alt for sea skimming, etc. Very, very good kit. Highly reliable, and did everything we expected it to do. So I know you guys can do a proper job of this, must be something odd going on.

Slashing regulations literally more important than saving American lives to Donald Trump

Re: What shall be done about civil liberties?

@six, same on this side of the pond. In many communities the plate recognition cameras are ubiquitous. My assumption is that most of these are controlled by the local sherriffs' offices but their use is only rarely revealed in court.

One problem is that their existence is used to justify ever more intrusive surveillance. For example I've seen the argument made that warrantless vehicle searches should be ok because you have "no reasonable expectation of privacy in a vehicle". Why? Presumably because we the people are supposedly ok with the plate cameras, indiscriminate use of stingrays, etc. Its tough to climb up a slippery slope...

What shall be done about civil liberties?

I love tech and wouldn't mind some level of automation to help me with the insane drivers I interact with on the I95 corridor. And to be honest, I too get sleepy, complacent, and boneheaded.

But I guarantee you that the lawyers will see V2V as a potential gold mine of data to support whatever personal injury litigation perspective they are being paid to litigate. This may or may not be a good thing. Regardless we need to consider up front what data are publicly available and what is covered by amendments 1,4,5. Yes its a short range protocol but Im having trouble imagining any scenario where your data is not stored in your vehicle's ECU and/or backhauled to Google or equivalent.

What really concerns me is potentially allowing local law enforcement real time access to data. I can easily see something like getting a traffic stop and 'cooperative search' because a database says Ive just driven from a 'dangerous political rally' and another database helpfully adds that 'I'm driving while black', combined V2V data that says Ive been driving in an environmentally irresponsible way... etc.

America's 2020 Census systems are a $15bn cyber-security tire fire

Census...

Participation would be a lot higher is it would stick with its Constitutionally mandated requirement for a headcount permitting apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives.

Their so-called 'American Community Survey' is so invasive It borders on a violation of the 4th amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The survey is not voluntary. Not that we bother using our constitution any more, mind.

Last go around had us detail: income, education, mortgage debt, marital status, race, religion. At least in my area canvassers were also recording lat/lon of residence entrances - at least until such practices became widely known.

Yes, of course all this data is in Google's great dossier factory in the sky, but must my own Govt sell my privates to these bastards? Getting a little tired of the Ministry of Truth over here...

...mines the one with the deliberately incorrect survey results in the pocket

Official: Perl the most hated programming language, say devs

Black perl

I will always have a special place in my heart for a language where a poem like Black Perl actually parses. Not sure if its a good place or not, so let's drink.

A draft US law to secure election computers that isn't braindead. Well, I'm stunned! I gotta lie down

Dont worry, no matter how good the law is...

...we will fsck it up before this is done.

A lot of pork has to be prepared and dished out before it leaves the senate and hits the house. And if it gets introduced into the house and goes to conference we are truly screwed.

And at the end of the day I'm sure Booz-Allen will be involved. That ALWAYS makes things sleaze up. Popcorn anyone?

USB stick found in West London contained Heathrow security data

Please wake me up and tell me...

...that the documents on the stick are watermarked. Please? Just one unique jsteg?

Once upon a time we had a bad spy problem on this side of the pond. Ames. Got a lot of people killed. Early in his career he left a briefcase of classified material on a train. His management covered up for him rather than hang the bastard ... makes you think a bit about this usb stick, doesn't it?

References please?

Even more warship cuts floated for the Royal Navy

Type 23 shallow water?

@dmacleo has a point; the 23s are pretty good platform for littoral work. Especially when the type 997 radars are fully deployed. I dont know much about the new modular anti-air missiles but what Ive read in the trade journals sounds encouraging. Eight Harpoons plus a 4.5in gun, helos, and perhaps some Royal Marines embarked makes for a pretty compelling package.

Draft is about 7 meters and change, so these will not be doing any brown water work but the weapons and sensors have decent range.

Type 23 is mainly an ASW platform intended to keep the N Atlantic commerce flowing. At this it is truly exceptional.

The USN counterpart, LCS, is comparatively unarmed. And vastly, vastly more expensive. Unless you are fighting a girls' primary school LCS will probably need to be defended by DDG-51's, which are definitely not at home in the shallows...

I was going to say 'unbelievable'

But why? USN has already been there.

We set the example by cutting costs through removal of the FFG-7's AAW capability... only to realize a figlet with no AAW capability is about as useful as a football bat. Supposedly the ships couldn't be upgraded, but that's a rather hollow argument when you look at what the Taiwanese can do with the same hull. The excuse being that LCS - a frigate in all but name - will somehow be better and do more with fewer hulls. LCS? Think of an F-35 that floats, but without weapons and built to commercial spec.

The OHPs were decent ships but I'd love to have something like the Type 23s. Brits have done some incredible work with these. Sorry to see them go.

Got to admire the F-35 though! One single program that has metastasized to the point where it bricks the defense establishments of not one but two of the world's greatest navies. If this were an enemy plot it would make more sense.

Mine's the one with a stiff, 4100 ton hull full of seamen in the pocket.

Boss put chocolate cake on aircon controller, to stop people using it

Bogus HVAC controls

In many govt buildings I've worked in the HVAC controls are placebos. Keeps the masses happy and doesn't change a thing. Temps are allowed to hit the rails on what the occupational safety people will accept...

...one exception being a time when we teamed up a building manager and his key ring with an intern who has Allen-Bradley PLC experience and tools. A very good lad -

definitely going places.

Go on IBMers, tell us what you really think

Re: The picture says it all -- IBM Confidential

Try working for the USG and realizing your granny has more highly classified info in her newspaper than you have in your safe...

That sounds remarkably Orwellian

For me the shock came when my pre-teen daughter asked me. "So what IS IBM?" "Are they really important or something?" Sigh, how the mighty have fallen...

So long – and thanks for all the phish

Article is meh, but the title is outstanding

Have a pint.

The only point I will make is that an organization is only as crafty as its stupidest executive. And boy do I have some great Peter Principle-compliant examples...

Let's make the coppers wear cameras! That'll make the ba... Oh. No sodding difference

"[...] these cameras are to be fit for purpose in safeguarding the rights of the public"

Have a pint. You have nailed it and gotten us to the heart of the problem.

Indeed these should be fit for the purpose of safeguarding our rights. At least in my chunk of the USA the coppers seem to believe they are only fit for purpose in covering themselves from liability.

So long as the primary goal of the police is to actually defend us and our rights, the ultimate outcome from pursuit of these objectives is the same.

Today though citizen's rights are on life support and the liability lawyer is king; hence any footage that increases liability- such as the murder of the Australian woman- is destined for the memory hole

Strange sample space

Lived and worked in around DC. No idea how one goes about getting a statistically relevant subset of 'DC'. The place is strange - extremely high end upper class neighborhoods adjacent to crack alleys... more law enforcement agencies with conflicting turf and objectives than any normal city... a daytime population vastly greater than nighttime... and so forth.

What I can tell you about cameras in the bedroom communities south of DC is that they've got a very strange failure mode. When more than a handful of cops are beating the crap out of an unarmed teenager - white or black - the BWC never seem to work. Strange, eh?

DXC slashes meal allowances for travelling troops: Please sir, may I have some more?

Re: Do Indian workers in the UK travel in their own deflationary bubble?

Little discrimination there? Experienced this myself recently- when my Asian wife's firm questioned her actuals on a trip to Southern California. Assumption is that because she is Asian she is supposed to eat on the cheap in Little Saigon. "But dont you kind of people group together?"

Re: One of the few things the US Govt does well...

I only rarely got govt to bite on actuals - usually involved traveling with a GS-14 or -15 who could work the 'team integrity' angle and get someplace nice.

For the most part you are right that govvies get paid to travel, but that depends on your agency and who you are. If I traveled on weekends Id generally get screwed. Traveling on weekdays Id sometimes get travel comp if the mission exceeded 8 hrs ... less my typical commute time.

One of the few things the US Govt does well...

...per diem on official travel is quite reasonable, even if you have special dietary requirements.

What drove me nonlinear is having travel companions who fall into the following two categories: (1) people so cheap that they will bank their per diem by staying in a crack alley motel and eat stale crackers, and (2) ho's who would live off a contractor's card.

If you're on travel I want you rested and ready for action...

-CB

Facebook, Google and pals may be hit with TV political ads rules

Re: Why is it that...

Quite so! When I first saw his name I had to say 'yougottabefrrakinkiddingme!' Guess not

Why is it that...

...only older male politicians are concerned about electile dysfunction?

Mine's the one with the small vacuum pump...

Your data will get hacked anyway so you might as well give up protecting it

Cremation for me, baby

More 'n enough people here already

When I kick everyone will be able to say, "he really made an ash of himself."

Malware again checks into Hyatt's hotels, again checks out months later with victims' credit cards

Missing something here

Thought the whole purpose of such movies is that you dont have to slide your card into a third party...

Microsoft's foray into phones was a bumbling, half-hearted fiasco, and Nadella always knew it

Re: Their analysis is actually half right

Good points, there.

I meant freedom for me as unofficial support service for colleagues and family who are barely computer literate. The iThings pretty much just work ... at least the earlier versions ... and people leave me alone as they can just do their thing. All engineers are inherently lazy- Im no exception.

Day job gives me an iphone 5s and its perfectly adequate to shoot my com wherever it needs to go. For playing with apps and app development, have my small fleet of droids.

As informal support winphones were a disaster for me, then win 10 started infesting desktops. Not good.

I did like the old Nokia phones. Awesome products. Shame they got bent.

-CB

Their analysis is actually half right

I think there is a grain of truth in the thought that people celebrated the concept of being able to replace the desktop with a powerful handheld...

...but what they missed is the apathy and in many cases hatred experienced by users towards their desktops at that point. Remember - this is in the era in which we went from an acceptable win 95 to a rather decent 98 to ... Vista! Desktop computing - unless you had the coin for Mac or patience for Linux (*) - sucked and showed no signs of improving. So when iThing and Droid came along the feeling one had is of pure freedom. With such freedom, why would you re-enter craptivity (**) to MS? When their phone reared its ugly head I felt a shiver of revulsion. According to their market share I'm not alone.

(*) put down that flamethrower... been using Linux since 1993. Talking about Joe user here, ok?

(**) Craptivity, n. (1) The state of being one experiences subsequent to expending so much captial on a solution that absolutely sucks, no captial remains with which to purchase a better solution. (2) Any long-term service contract with EDS, HPE, etc

IT at sea makes data too easy to see: Ships are basically big floating security nightmares

Racing boat technology

Why are racing boats so well equipped? "The difference between the men and the boys is the price of their toys." When I was a younger man I blew my $ on the boats and toys. Healthier than a crack habit, but definitely not cheaper. For some reason the kids want to go to college so Im turning my money gun away from the boats. *Sob*

In my professional life Ive been intimately familiar with the bridges of many large, grey painted hulls. Working for the world's largest operator of fast planes, big ships, and violent men has given me a fair amount of hands-on at sea time. The gear is crap, the configuration worse, systems engineering nonexistent... yet oddly enough the price is beyond dear. If you know why ... you are a wiser man than me. Suspect the multinationals that own and operate container ships have the same dysfunctional organizations that give rise to terrible ICS implementation. How to fix? Who the hell knows.

I love disruptive computer jargon. It's so very William Burroughs

In fairness to guys who write documentation...

...supposedly any idiot can write it.

So, given an idiot, do I let him write code, or...

Google touts Babel Fish-esque in-ear real-time translators. And the usual computer stuff

Dropping phones in toilet?

Pre-teen boys. They could break a bowling ball. Toilets are only one of their varied arsenal. The things that can and do happen are ... unspeakable.

Need English to Program Management real-time translator

The older I get the more fatigued I feel at the end of the day, having spent the entire day policing my thoughts and verbal output to ensure only the purest politically correct bullshit is employed.

A couple years ago we had a guy hack up a Voxtec phrasealotor to convert plain English to PC BS. A very limited hack, yet useful! For example:

"He's a fscking idiot!" Becomes "this employee requires additional training."

"You fscked up!" Becomes "perhaps we should try an alternative approach"

Simply glorious.

Byte Night: Bed down with tech chiefs, celebs ... or stay on your sofa

Good on you

Every bit helps, and it helps to consider how many paychecks you are away from hitting the pavement. Encourage all to volunteer at your local homeless shelter, cold weather shelter, soup kitchen, abuse shelter. Yeah, the system needs money but what it really needs is hands. You will be surprised to see who really is in need. I meet a lot of fellow techies that have fallen on hard times...

Headless body found near topless beach: Missing private sub journalist identified

submariners

Agree the headline could have been improved

One thing though I learned in the service though: gotta watch the submariners. Bunch of guys stuffed in a long, hard tube full of seamen. Nothing good can come of this...

Roland McGrath steps down as glibc maintainer after 30 years

Great job

Fair winds and following seas, mate. Hoping your next years are a blast.

Create a user called '0day', get bonus root privs – thanks, Systemd!

i think the term here is 'sexual intellectual'

Aka f'ng know it all...

It's time for a long, hard mass debate over sex robots, experts conclude

Re: Its the spirit of the age.

Hawkwind! Excellent; havent heard that in a while and need to dig up the tape. Have a brew and upvote for the memories

FCC 126MHz 5G auction

I dont understand something

OK - so Im taxed, excised, tarriffed, user fee-ed, and generally bent over so much that I walk funny all the time. So much of my income is going bye-bye that my wallet wants a divorce. And presumably some of my hard earned cash is funding the FCC and its godfather, the Dept of Commerce (whatever thats doing for me). And now it stands to 'make billions' in this next spectrum sale? I suppose their budget will be cut an equal amount ? Or the treasury gets a check? Didnt think so. So the question is... who is pocketing all the cash? How?

On the couch with an AI robo-doc asking me personal questions

Re: Shrinks are useless or crazy

Chris, Im sorry that your mate punched out. Sucks, sounds like he was an interesting character.

10 whole min for a full and bogus diagnosis? Think I will go for the AI

Re: If you've got UNIX...

Strange story about that...

...I sticky tape all the cameras on my computers, especially when working in sensitive areas like server rooms. Security offizer was doing a walk-down, spotted my stickies, and pitched a fit. So I said the obvious, "Um, ma'am, they're a LOT more secure this way. And you are all about secure, right?"

She replies, just about foaming at the mouth, "Damn it, I ordered you to take that off!"

Me, trying to stay calm, "WTF is your problem? The only use would be to spy on me, and given the nature if this space I cant imagine that you have the authorities to do so. Let's go check with the head... if you ARE playing with these in our server spaces you will be in dheep schitt."

At that point she shouted something inarticulate, requested that I perform a nearly impossible autoerotic task, and went away.

Please tell me there is an AI shrink that can fix a person like that?