Posts by a_builder

Post Office finally throttles delayed in-house EPOS project

'walk in and take over" support for Horizon datacenters, applications, and connecting infrastructure in a contract pegged at £269 million ($355 million).'

An unverified mess of software that is known to contain bugs errors and defects.

Hmmme well that is a contract so toxic that only the desperate would take it on.

And if anyone competent does take it on it will be at a cost of squillions......

Who would want to be dealing with the range of utterly defective individuals and cultures exposed in the Horizon IT enquiry?

Google goes cold on Europe: Stops making smart thermostats for continental conditions

Re: Bollocks

Exactly.

I have a Victorian house with the same sort of issues and UFH in more than 50% of it.

Some areas I leave on low temp but blip the temp up periodically to prevent damp.

Caning from TVRs saved huge amounts of gas.

Re: Bollocks

Too true.

The wiring is a total nightmare to implement in its variations of S/Y plan whereas IRL it is all very simple.

I cringe when I see the wiring ‘centres’ ….. offends a logical mind.

Re: Again

The Honeywell system is quite good and the boiler controls pretty agnostic.

I run the smart system with radiator controllers and UFH.

Works very well.

Only problem is when is EoL for the system as it depends on cloud control.

The other issue is the blatant insecurity of the comms protocols.

£136M government grant saves troubled Post Office from suboptimal IT

Re: The utter shittiness of English law

You know that actually isn’t the issue at all.

Most of the defence lawyers were incompetents

Most of the defence barristers were incompetents

Most of the court clerks were incompetents

Most of the judges were incompetents

Most of the prosecution lawyers were

Most of the prosecution barristers were incompetents

Why?

The expert witness statement from Gareth Jenkins didn’t have the correct text to bookend it - it was inadmissible. All a vaguely legally knowledgable person had to do was read it. It was set out as a standard witness statement.

Nobody had bothered to read it properly.

Well except for three judges who had mused in court that and independent expert witness was required…..PO in those three cases dropped proceedings.

Three judges get a gold star for actually ding their jobs properly.

The rest are incompetent.

We told Post Office about system problems at the highest level, Fujitsu tells Horizon Inquiry

Re: Lessons ?

I remember seeing a few counter staff doing that and asking why….werent happy I’d asked.

Re: Time to produce the audit trail

The prosecution of some of the legal teams is a must.

Some of the ‘let’s not look under that rock’ stuff is bad advice as there was an obligation to look under those rocks and report back.

Re: Time to produce the audit trail

Not so.

Gareth Jenkins was allegedly an ‘expert witness’ he had an obligation to both sides to be fair and impartial.

He had an obligation to flag BEDS.

Re: Time to produce the audit trail

As Fujitsu’s ‘expert witness’ was by pretending to be an expert witness a servant of the court.

So he had an absolute obligation to be even handed and tell the court of the BEDS issues.

As did anyone else in the organisation who knew of BEDS that were likely to impact on trials.

The interesting bit is the nobody has *yet* found the call centre scripts or fingered who organised for the clean up.

One thing that is blindingly obvious is that there was an organised cover up both at PO and Fujitsu and a lot of material was deep sixed.

Techie left 'For support, contact me' sign on a server. Twenty years later, someone did

Re: Documentation pays (sort of)

Sounds very big and expensive to me.

Sounds familiar.

I worked for a major UK University.

I left on good terms. I backed up all the UNIX boxes OS to a partition on my PC and also to the NAS.

Left a printed doc with all of the passwords etc.

Years later I get a call.

We had an issue with the XYZ machine [a Franken Machine cobbled together out of a number of very expensive machines] the manufacturers told us to reinstall the software. My heart sank on hearing this as it didn’t run anything standard and the ‘manufacturer’ made about 40% of the XYZ.

I then remembered my PC backups and directed them to look there. No dice. Some enterprising post grad had used disk imaging software to wipe the whole disk including the secured partition I’d carefully created.

Then the NAS - we moved to a new one - no we didn’t copy that partition across.

For some unknown reason I did offer to sort the mess out.

You simply can’t help some people! The ability to self sabotage anything is….incredible.

Re: Cables

That is the best advice to keep your hands clean. Send them an email and signed for delivery by snail mail to tell them if your concern. And keep copies.

I wouldn’t try and log in as that could fall under the Computer Misuse Act.

I made this network so resilient nothing could possibly go wro...

Re: Triple redundancy?

Was actually very common for have cooling water run to waste in the pre water meter days.

A lot of big science labs had it.

It caused a lot of issues in the late 90's when all that was banned- rightly - and chilled water became the thing.

Faulty valve sent Astrobotic's Peregrine lander straight back to Earth's atmosphere

Re: Another helium valve ...

Also……

The freezing point of nitrogen [-210C] would require active heating of the tank.

Helium might require a little warming to boil off.

Helium or nitrogen are hard to work with.

Tired of airport security queues? SQL inject yourself into the cockpit, claim researchers

Re: "TSA has procedures in place..."

The ID could be anything that an airport would accept….

Problem is that details matching the ID could be inserted in the list of valid persons.

EV sales hit speed bump as drivers unplug from the electric dream

Try looking next time you go.

Went down the M4

Banks if Tesla and Other brands at Reading.

Same just before Bristol.

More than 50 chargers at both locations 3 cars charging.

The number of superchargers is increasing very very fast.

Agree.

I’ve a Tesla Y and an oil burner that I rarely use.

Re: the average journey

Competition will bring down kWh prices.

People are now able to shop for the best prices and providers with unused charges = no revenue will soon figure they have to change something…..which will be membership rates.

Re: not a solution for all

I’ve driven EV since 2018.

To start with charging was amazing as even on the Tesla network you had soooo many bays to choose from.

There was a time a few years back when it got a bit harder but now the number of services with an awful lot of chargers has massively increased.

Cancer patient forced to make terrible decision after Qilin attack on London hospitals

Re: Work to hack everything helps.

That’ll be DORA the explorer?

City council megaproject to spend millions for manual work Oracle system was meant to do

Re: Credit where it is due. This was years in the making.

It isn’t the councillors who will have made the real decisions.

It will have been the executives who will be paid £100k’s that is where the blame should lie. By now they will have moved in circles to their next better remunerated job..

Re: Priceless ..

I’m struggling with how to screw up a banking reconciliation module……little cheap systems manage that…..

Re: Priceless ..

It does seem odd that the problem is the banking reconciliation module……it isn’t like accountants always start from the bank.

Developers allow

33% land and planning costs

33% build costs

33% gross margin

Be careful as gross margin then has all the head office and insurance costs taken from it so IRL you might make 15% if everything goes swimmingly.

In construction there is always risk - things like the out of control materials and labour inflation we saw two years ago. Impossible to budget for that. Subcontractors going bust and leaving a part finished mess behind.

New solvent might end winter charging blues for EV owners

Re: Pardon moi?

I have a Tesla X and know the engineering is awful.

However, Tesla charging infrastructure is really very good.

But I would carry a long extension cable and a collection of adaptors for commando plugs…..just in case!

Missed expectations, zero guidance: Tesla's 'great year' was anything but

Re: FSD on old Hardware

I’ give Tesla the option.

- wave the charge now; or

- I’ll pay you and send you the county court paperwork and you can argue it out in front of a judge.

Oddly they always wave the charges.

Do you think they have something to hide?

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

Re: Just think about this for a minute

He didn't strike me as being the right calibre of person to be leading a substantial business unit.

I wouldn't hire him.

He did not impress.

The issue is that there was no 'single source of truth' which is fundamental to any systems veracity.

Fujitsu employees were going in and altering all of the records presumably by SUing a the postmaster using SU privileges.

However, the underlying systems is so bad that it didn't track the SUs.

Nothing in the system can be trusted at all as anything can have been happening including syphoning monies off.

The other major issue here is that Post Office appear to have engaged in will full data mass destruction.

Lets hope that the forgotten backups on the old servers that have been found contain relevant data.

The next question is who were PO's bankers in this period?

Were the suspense accounts real physical accounts somewhere. If so the bank could well have the historical data in its data barns.

Re: Compensation?

PO had dreadful accounting and I find it amazing they were ever signed off TBH.

There were massive suspense account balances £10’s millions which is why, I stairs AIB stopped the cash points deal. I think they were getting done!

That would be interesting evidence.

There was an extraordinary bit of evidence as to how PO wrote off these massive balances.

The auditors are not covered in glory.

Fujitsu wins flood contract extension despite starring in TV drama about its failures

Re: Horizon

Exactly so.

Also the ability to falsify the audit trail - as the logins appeared to be the poor old postmaster. That sounds a lot like conspiracy to defraud and false accounting to me.

Philips recalls 340 MRI machines because they may explode in an emergency

Re: If you aren't full of shrapnel you will probably suffocate

Buuuuuuuut

I was upgrading an NMR room in a very well known UK university.

It was a 7.4T magnet.

We had to deliberately quench it before moving it downstairs.

Power resistor box connected…..safety?

Tech from manufacturers merely opened the windows and said stand back.

The funniest thing was the panic in everyone’s faces at the intense smell of burning. The room had cooled so much that the electric heater (it wasn’t an inverter) in the a/c unit had come in and was burning all the dust. In those days NMR machines used kW to run themselves and their computer systems so heating g was never needed in that room.

Bright spark techie knew the drill and used it to install a power line, but couldn't outsmart an odd electrician

Re: Other folks' DIY

Oh plumbers do what they want…..I’ve got to do it for my job mate…..cut through 3/4 of a joist….no other way…..translation that is all I can be bothered to do.

Not once but twice I’ve been standing on staircases thinking they are a bit springy…..first time 4” joists cut to fit a 2” waste pipe…..second time 3” hardwood joists cut to fit central heating pipes in a historic house.

Post Office Horizon Inquiry calls for compensation to be brought forward

I don't love lawyers.

But

In this case if a group of investors had not funded the lawyers that actually proved the PO were lying scumbags then justice would never have been done at all.

All the follow on money goes to the victims and not the lawyers.

I totally agree with Sir Wyn - these people whose lives were destroyed need to be put back where they were before this happened as a matter of urgency. Then they need to be compensated for the criminal actions on top of that.

It is mystery to me why people have not been arrested for their criminal behaviour in carrying out malicious prosecution.

The Post Office prosecutors *knew* the behaviour was malicious as they had been told that by their own barrister. Unfortunately, he couldn't remember who he told that to precisely.

Whilst I am sure that, Met Police style, a lot of embarrassing files have 'been locked in a cupboard' this is going to unravel at some point in time.

I just hope it is soon as some people really do deserve some jail time for this and the longer this is spun out, which it will be, then the less chance of the guilty being fit to stand trial or to be given the prison time they so richly deserve.

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth II – Britain's first high-tech monarch

Re: "the availability on ARPANET of the Coral 66 compiler provided by the GEC 4080 computer "

Oddly the problem was the two mechanically coupled radar scanners.

One at the tail and on in the nose.

This seems pretty sensible at first glance.

Even more sensible that the scanners were linked by a drive shaft so they were perfectly in sync. Calibrate on the ground and you get no out of sync ghosts etc.

The system worked really well on the ground.

When airborne the system was dreadful. Multiplicity of ghost images which overloaded the processing.

Why was this?

Well the mechanical scanners weighted 100’s of kg and when subjected to any mild G forces the connecting, very long, coupling shaft was subjected to a lot of torque so twisted and the scanners went out of sync.

Out of sync there were loads of ghost images -> system overload….

You've stolen the antiglare shield on that monitor you've fixed – they say the screen is completely unreadable now

Re: corroded traces

I did the same with a Bosch dishwasher.

You do have to wonder why as part of the pretest, before bulk manufacturing a PCB, they don’t run it and have a look with an IR camera?

I reinforced the tracks with some nice thick solid copper soldered onto the PCB.

It went on to do another 7 years of dishwashing.

Electric fastback fun: Now you can surf the web from the driving seat of your Polestar 2

Re: Cue the anti-moving work-around in 3, 2, 1...

You can buy a wiring loom plugin that disabled the brake signal to the head unit.

US watchdog opens probe into Tesla's Autopilot driver assist system after spate of crashes

Re: A solution looking for a problem

I've got a Tesla X and it is interesting to see what the systems miss.

Various silly things happen with automated braking when it is not needed.

The steering bins out even with a solid while line painted down the side of the road.

It is far from foolproof.

The ONLY feature that I use is the auto distance control - I never let it near the steering. That way I am alert to the situational information.

Like the build quality of the bodywork it is all very ish.

It is a shame because the platform underneath it is actually very, very good.

Subcontractors working on CityFibre's £45m Derby rollout threaten to 'rip up tarmac' in dispute over payments

Re: Rip it up and start again.

The only reasons to move away from VM are upstream bandwidth and reliability. Nether of which are great with VM.

1) Covid shutting down suppliers, manufacturers and container ports around the world.

Some truth in this but now overplayed

2) Brexit - both the obvious, and also suppliers building up stocks for the 2 Brexit "deadlines" that came and went, in case of post-Brexit shortages, which led to price falls due to over-supply, so then Covid lockdowns gave a lot of people the chance to do a lot more DIY than usual at lower prices than usual, so the warehouses emptied and couldn't easily be refilled.

A fallback excuse if I ever heard one.

3) the Ever-Given stranding causing delays to other shipping.

It was a massive ship but it seems to have got 100x bigger and being used as a handy excuse by everyone.

4) HS2 getting first dibs on UK imports.

Another handy excuse but that is not the way the supply chain works.

There are not using bagged cement to HS2!! It all comes from a batching plant.

From what I've been told, there is not going to be a return to normal across the materials supply industry for a long time to come.

Let me rephrase that for you.

"From what I've been told, there is not going to be a return to normal across the materials supply industry until either the supplies have made ludicrous profits and/or the CMA and EU starting fining the bejesus out the suppliers."

FIFY

There is no real shortage of concrete. We have a national account with a major producer and we get whatever quantity we want delivered at a few days notice.

I am afraid it is blatant market manipulation. There is a shortage of bagged cement that small sites use but that is down to slow supplies to builders merchants.

The steel prices increases are also opportunistic and everyone else is pilling in to have a bit of it.

Time for the CMA to start looking into it.

As far as ripping up tarmac once it is down: that would be criminal damage.

Inventor of the graphite anode – key Li-ion battery tech – says he can now charge an electric car in 10 minutes

Re: There still remains......

I agree.

I rarely charge my Tesla on the Super Chargers even though I have lifetime free charging with the car.

Mostly it trickle charges on the lamppost outside my house which does 5.5kW or at the office where I can get 7kW or 22kW at our warehouse.

Honestly provided you are not the kind of person who runs a car until the fuel light comes on you will be fine with an EV.

The trick is just to trickle charge it whenever there is an opportunity and keep say 100 miles charge on it so if you need to you can get to a Super Charger and then zoom down the motorway to the next Super Charger.

Wyoming powers ahead with Bill Gates-backed sodium-cooled nuclear generation plant

Re: To Bad...

Ummh

What they are actually talking about is using Sodium (Na) as the primary coolant to transfer the heat for storage to molten common salt as (NaCl).

I do have a chemistry PhD so I do understand the difference.

I would be interested to see what the isotope decay cascade is like on the molten salt side of this as the sodium does have an irradiated and decay cascade that will effectively radioactively transfer to the salt over time. So the salt will potentially become 'dirty'.

The main issue us dow chemically clean the salt is. So how many unusual decay cascades get started off.

This is not a simple problem. Unless the NaCl has been fractionally crystallised a few times to get it very pure. But then it won't be cheap tonnage chemical.....

Tesla owners win legal fight after software update crippled older Model S batteries

Re: Carbon neutral

I used my Tesla X LongRange to tow a 2,000kg digger (electric too as it happens the other day).

Performance is surprisingly unaffected.

Battery range is about half.

I used to have a Discovery4 and the range was less affected by towing.

I think this is more aerodynamics and four extra tyres than anything else.

Broadband plumber Openreach yanks legacy copper phone lines in Suffolk town of Mildenhall en route to getting the UK on VoIP

OMG - El Reg: this is a tech journal

Another El Rag article confusing the basics.

This one confuses the withdrawal of POTS with withdrawal of copper.

Not the same thing at all.

39 Post Office convictions quashed after Fujitsu evidence about Horizon IT platform called into question

Re: why did they uphold judgement on the 3 staff members?

Oh I agree totally.

Given how very malicious PO’s actions have been **everything** needs to be assumed as being dubious.

As the 39’s convictions appear to have been obtained by a mix of perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Any evidence given by those same PO prosecution team individuals has to be of doubtful value.

Re: The question of compensation

Yes, they have a claim under the Corporate Manslaughter Act.

Or more precisely once they have proved manslaughter getting compensation should be straightforward.

Normally this would be styled by insurers but I suspect PO will have used its Crown status to self insure.

Give it

a) has a reverse burden of proof; and

b) PO have admitted what they have done

There should be a lot of good lawyers prepared to help on a no win no fee basis.

Re: System Failure

I agree it should have been obvious to PO.

But PO were not interested in anything that conflicted with their narrative “Horizon is perfect”.

The duplicated lines should be pretty easy to find. Most audit/accounting software has a function to scan for those as it is a favoured way of fraudsters to do things by reposting the same invoice a few times.

I am guessing that is what Second Sight spotted early on and also the trails of people logging into to manually adjust the duplicated lines.

It would not have taken a genius to spot this as it would not have accorded with the keystroke records from the terminals.

Further you might well have had reboot/login/logout timings from the syslog to then compare to where the errors showed up.....if I am getting the gist of how this system worked.

Kudos to Second Sight and the relevant barrister for having stood up to this and called it out. But also Kudos to the civil claim lawyers who proved that PO and Fujitsu were up to no good.

Because their convictions were not based on Horizon evidence.

So stated the Court.