Posts by vtcodger

Royal Navy nuclear submarine captain rapped for letting crew throw shoreside BBQ party

Tomahawk missile range

BGM109 range was about 1500mi=2400km back in the 1980s. Doubt it's changed much. A bit iffy for London to Moscow (1540mi), but more than adequate for North Sea to much of Western Russia.

Elevating cost-cutting to a whole new level with million-dollar bar bills

Re: Elevator interface

Nothing will stop a determined digger driver with your fibre in his sights.

While diggers seem to prefer fiber, if none is available, any wire will do -- phone, power, coax. They can also snack on water, gas, or sewage pipes.

Forget tabs – the new war is commas versus spaces: Web heads urged by browser devs to embrace modern CSS

Re: What's wrong with CGA?

Nobody needs more than 4 colours on a page!

What are the extra 2 colors for?

ICANN delays .org sell off after California's attorney general intervenes at last minute, tears non-profit a new one over sale

Britannia?

"Oh, as a side note, looking at the letter-head is that "Britannia" I see before me on the "Great Seal"?"

I believe it's Minerva/Athena. The nametag depending upon which side of the Adriatic you are standing on.

RAND report finds that, like fusion power and Half Life 3, quantum computing is still 15 years away

Not always awful

"- usable automated call handling"

A lot of them ARE pretty bad. OTOH, some are marginably usable. Especially the ones that let one key in information from the phone keypad instead of depending on voice recognition. Actually, I think the best automated call handling is less unusable than most 2FA schemes I've encountered.

Re: What the likes of a RAND are terrified of <s>advising you</s>

Two things:

1. The principle problem with quantum computing if it ever works probably isn't updating security practices and algorithms -- although that's bad enough. It's all the previously unreadable stuff that folks have recorded and can now read.

2. Quantum decryption is at the it_doesn't_have_to_work_very_well_to_be_useful end of the computing spectrum. If it only works 1 time in 50 you can just try over and over until you get a result that isn't garbage.

Europe calls for single app to track coronavirus. Meanwhile America pretends it isn’t trying to build one at all

Re: So, Musk bought a thousand ventilators

"As for Thiel, I can't help but wonder : did he keep his plane crew isolated with him, or did he send them back to fare for themselves"

Probably had them shot.

Consumer reviewer Which? finds CAN bus ports on Ford and VW, starts yelling 'Security! We have a problem...'

Re: a known issue for years?

An inexpensive keyless entry device known as a "brick" has been available to (and actually used by) car thieves for about a century.

Re: Who needs access to CAN to change tyre status

My wife's car has Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). The sales people made it clear when we bought the car that the system was unreliable and more or less useless. (When was the last time THAT happened to you?) . Time has proved them to have been honest about that at least.

I have long since augmented the TPMS with a $5.00 set of indicating tire valve caps that actually tell me when tires are underinflated and refrain from reporting temperature changes as flat tires.

COVID-19 is pretty nasty but maybe this is taking social distancing too far? Universe may not be expanding equally in all directions

Re: Here's a bug report for cosmology

Better than "it's an open universe, you can always fork it and fix it yourself"

Not a bad idea ... But the documentation seems to be sadly deficient.

Australian digital-radio-for-railways Huawei project derailed by US trade sanctions against Chinese tech giant

Re: Trade war

The US has a quarter of the planet's proven coal reserves. It's the Saudi Arabia of coal. And it is currently awash with cheap natural gas. I don't think Australia is going to export much of either to the US. I'm having trouble thinking of anything that Australia could export to the US. Decent beer maybe. That's about it.

Delivery drones: Where are they when we really need them?

Re: It'll happen

I imagine that you'll have one or more delivery ports -- think in terms of a mailbox on steroids -- on your house or business. The delivery vehicle will robotically just slip your delivery into the port. I'm very old and I can remember that back in the 1940s in the US they actually did that (manually not robotically) with milk, bakery products and ice. I think they did it with coal in colder climates and they still do it (again manually, but it could probably be automated) with fuel oil or propane in cold areas beyond the reach of natural gas.

Re: "Futurist predict"

Now that I think about it, why not beef up the overhead utility conduit and using it as a track for delivery "drones". Sort of a 19th century solution. But it might be quieter, safer, less bandwidth intensive, etc than airborne delivery vehicles. Downsides? I doubt the pigeons will like it.

It'll happen

Mt GUESS is that 50 years from now, automated delivery will be ubiquitous. And some of it at least -- the light and/or urgent stuff -- will be by air. But the problems are legion and will take a LONG time to solve. And unlike autonomous cars -- which some people covet strongly and a smaller number of folks actually need -- there's no particular urgency.

Re: "Futurist predict"

"because small towns do not have the money to bury all wires and get rid of them in one go"

I live in an area with buried utilities. They are great aesthetically. And they are more reliable than overhead wires. But the do fail at times. And when they do, repairs are costly. And slow. And are prone to leave trenches in the roads and yards. My thought would be. By all means tidy up your overhead wiring if it needs it and you can afford it. But think long and hard about whether underground is really appropriate for your situation before you start digging.

Leaving Las Vegas... for good? IT industry conference circuit won't look the same on other side of COVID-19 pandemic

Re: I disagree

Conferences will resume

Perhaps. This looks to be an involuntary experiment to determine if conferences have any real utility in the 21st century. If they do, then presumably the conferences will start up again. Or not. Or maybe they'll end up taking a different form -- likely smaller, less stressful, with many more remote options.

It doesn't help that modern air travel has degenerated into an experience about as pleasant as a weekend in prison and that the few venues capable of hosting a really large conference are not necessarily places one wants to endure more than maybe thrice in a lifetime.

Time will tell.

It's time to track people's smartphones to ensure they self-isolate during this global pandemic, says WHO boffin

Re: But I don't have a so-called "smart" phone.

"But I don't have a so-called "smart" phone."

Then you won't have to leave it at home should you decide to go out. (Why would you go out other than for some reason that's permitted anyway? And if you did decide to make an illicit trip, why would you take a location tracker along?)

Aside from the civil liberties aspect of this idea, it strikes me as being just a bit clueless. There are almost certainly far better ways to encourage isolation and discourage virus transmission.

The show Musk go on: Tesla defies Silicon Valley coronavirus lockdown order, keeps Fremont factory open

Re: Let me get this straight

You'll probably enjoy this opinion piece. https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

His take: The data collection process for Covid-19 has been a more or less complete fiasco. The data at hand is so poor that it could describe anything from a new, not especially virulent, respiratory disease -- less severe than this year's seasonal flu -- to something comparable to the "Spanish flu" of a century ago that killed many millions of a much smaller human population.

Who is John Ioannidis? He is a Stanford professor and expert on medical statistics. who is widely known for his criticisms of reporting practices for medical research.

NASA to launch 247 petabytes of data into AWS – but forgot about eye-watering cloudy egress costs before lift-off

Re: Hang on...

"then surely that data should have gone directly to a NASA data centre first anyway "

Well yes ... sort of. Back in the day, that was called a ground station. It took the data, unpacked the multiplexed telemetry data into structures that were/are a bit more conventional and added appropriate metadata. Again, back in the day, that was necessary because vehicle bandwidth was very costly and therefore data streams were as compact as possible. And data rates were often very high because the link could only be up during short time windows. So the ground station equipment was specialized, expensive, and often project unique. Then the data went to a project command center for analysis before being archived.

Assuming things are still much like that, the AWS part is presumably just the archiving.

Re: Just wondering

"But, but, CLOUD!!!"

You've looked at clouds from both sides now, And now ...

After a weekend of WTF-ing at Trump's COVID-19 testing website vow, Google-Verily's site finally comes to life... And it's not what was promised

Re: Marketing here to help

Don't over-react. In all likelihood Google already has your private medical data and is handling it with their usual respect for your privacy.

Good luck pitching a tent on exoplanet WASP-76b, the bloody raindrops here are made out of molten iron

Re: So 640 light years away

"how can they tell one side of the planet from another?"

Doppler shift in Iron emission lines perhaps. It'll presumably be the sum of planetary rotation round its star, and its "daily rotation". It'll (presumably) be slightly different at different points on the planet's orbit (and at different points in the Earth's orbit as well). Can "they" really measure things that finely and sort them out? I haven't the slightest.

Think your smartwatch is good for warning of a heart attack? Turns out it's surprisingly easy to fool its AI

"Is this really a problem, or a proof of concept with very limited applications and concerns?"

Somewhere in between perhaps. Some physiological measurements are simple and straightforward. Temperature for example. Or pulse rate. Others are judgment calls. Systolic blood pressure (the second number in BP measurements) for example. I'm told that some folks don't genuinely have any well defined systolic cut off. Electrocardiograms definitely seem to fall into the judgment call category. Providing me with a chart of my EC wouldn't do much good. I don't have the slightest idea how to interpret it. And neither do most other people I'm pretty sure. I actually read up on that once. And I concluded that it'd take a lot more training than I have any intention of getting for me to make sense of ECs. So having a cheap device that can check it might be useful. But the device has to work properly for most people most of the time. And it'd help if it knew when its readings are unreliable.

Re: Says more about their CNN possibly

"I wouldn't rely on any piece of kit doing a clinical job that is produced as a consumer item."

I understand the thought. But it's not at all clear to me that consumer grade thermometers, sphygnomanometers(blood pressure measuring devices), blood glucose meters, blood urate meters, etc are much if any less reliable overall than their clinical equivalents. It's true that the consumer products may have some corners cut in design. On the other hand, most of the things being measured depend on time of day, health, when and what the last meal was, etc, etc,etc. A home user is typically much better equipped to provide a consistent test environment than is a physician's office where readings are likely to depend on when the appointment is, how stressful the trip to the physician's office is, who makes the measurement, and in some cases how they make it.

In any case consumer grade measurements are orders of magnitude cheaper than lab measurements and are likely to reveal patterns of physiological behavior that won't be available to physicians unless they slap you in a well staffed, well equipped Intensive Care Unit for a few days. They're likely to be the first health screen that most folks get -- especially in developing countries and developed countries like the US with dysfunctional healthcare systems. So I suspect that consumer grade devices are always going to be an important element in healthcare. It's important that they work reasonably reliably and that their limitations are well understood.

Alleged Vault 7 leaker trial finale: Want to know the CIA's password for its top-secret hacking tools? 123ABCdef

Re: Those two passwords?

"So I am probably on some sort of list now for guessing/knowing something I should not?"

Yep.

But your name is misspelled.

And your address is a place where someone else of the same name lived for four months 17 years ago which has since burned to the ground.

'Unfixable' boot ROM security flaw in millions of Intel chips could spell 'utter chaos' for DRM, file encryption, etc

Re: And none of this is important

"Are we to expect you suspect that a forlorn hope, vtcodger, and practically anything is then virtually possible"

Nope. This is way beyond my pay grade. The only clue I have is that if "anything is then "virtually possible" I should think there would be a **LOT** of excitement, hand waving, blame shifting, and preposterous "solutions". So maybe in practice having the management keys to most of the world's Intel CPUs become public knowledge is no big deal and nothing to worry about.

Re: The best.

"... and self-isolate."

The network cable is the one with a flat 8-pin connector.

Re: And none of this is important

I'm pretty sure that I don't understand this. But it sure sounds like the miscreant doesn't need to tease out the management key on your PC. They can use the management key from their own PC if it has the same chipset as yours. Which suggests that it's only a matter of time -- weeks? months? years? -- before the management keys to every intel CPU with a management engine are available to everybody on the internet. The next question would seem to be what nasty things can they actually do if they know that key and somehow get access to someone's Intel CPU by, for example, by incorporating some malicious Javascript in an ad?

Let's all fervently hope that the answer is "Not much really." If it isn't, you may want to wait a while before sending that dust covered (ME less) 386DX out in the garage off to the dump, You may be about to find a use for it.

New Jersey beats New York – and then the rest of America – on broadband access. How does your state fare?

Re: It's an American tradition

It wasn't clear to me from the article whether Broadband Now depended on the ISPs for anything other than pricing information. So I'm -- perhaps generously -- assuming that their speed numbers come from users. But yes, if they asked Comcast about speeds I doubt they got a straight answer. Even a competent, honest ISP is probably is going to quote you the speeds experienced by their most favorably situated users, not the folks at the distal end of a long, noisy wire that has acquired a number of patches over the years.

It's an American tradition

Bizarre internet access estimates for the US are nothing new. In 2008, the FCC described its own broadband statistics as "Stunningly meaningless". And I don't think things have changed that much. Nothing against Broadband Now. It looks like they are doing the best they can with a situation that pretty much defies rational analysis. And their rankings might even be roughly right. It's credible that residents of Alaska (outside probably of Anchorage) have pitiful to non-existent broadband access and New Jersey might well have excellent access overall. But the notion that rural Americans have much in the way of internet access is pretty weird. I doubt that the average rural American can stream low resolution video and upload digital images simultaneously. Assuming that they can do either.

You. Drop and give me 20... per cent IPv6 by 2023, 80% by 2025, Uncle Sam tells its IT admins after years of slacking

KInd of like Ada perhaps

Frankly, I doubt these people know what they are doing. It's probably possible to move the federal government -- at least everything that doesn't face the public, to IPV6. But this doesn't sound like the way to do it. We'll ignore the lurking question of why on Earth one would want to spend considerable money and resource to "fix" something that very likely isn't broken.

A few of you may recall the Ada fiasco of the mid 1970s. Back in the distant past, the US Department of Defense looked upon its ever growing IT budgets and said to itself. What we see is chaos. And it is growing. We must do something. We can't easily do anything about the hardware. We're stuck with what we own. But we CAN do something about the software. And we will. We shall convene a coven of wizards and have them conjure up a single computer language that will satisfy all our needs. Because we are such a large customer, we can coerce the craftsmen and their masters into using it for all purposes. And the economies of scale shall be enormous. And the OMB will be ever so pleased.

So the wizards convened and conjured up Ada. Let me say that there is nothing especially wrong with Ada per se. People can and do use it today. And it works OK. It bills itself as being ideal for mission critical, safety critical, yada, yada, yada ... applications. And maybe it is. If suspect a lot of that is BS of various degrees of purity, but maybe I'm wrong. And it's certainly not unsuited to such applications.

Having an Ada specification in hand, the DOD then told it's program offices (the folks who do procurement and manage development efforts). From this date forward, thou shalt use Ada or risk disgrace and being passed over for promotion. And the program offices told the contractors. Thou shalt use Ada. And the contractors looked around and said, "OK, where can we get an Ada compiler?" And they found that there were no Ada compilers. And it also turned out that writing an Ada compiler was a non-trivial job. So the contractors said to the program offices. "Look, we can do what you need when you need it, but not in Ada. How about writing us a waiver and we'll use Fortran (or whatever) and rewrite it later in Ada if you so desire?" So waivers were requested And granted. Lots of waivers.

Ada compilers were eventually written. But by that time, the enthusiasm for Ada had passed.

There was incidentally another problem with Ada -- which was that it somehow got advertised as a language for "embedded systems". What's an embedded system? The dimwitted, cheap little chips that run your coffee maker and the hygrometer in my bathroom and things like that are embedded systems. The military owns a LOT of those. And in the 1970s the digital hardware for them was extremely simple. Typically a few TTL chips, a bit of memory, and some custom circuits. You didn't program those in a higher order language -- especially not one with garbage collection which makes timing analysis next to impossible. You programmed them in assembler.

Anyway, Ada was a near total flop from the DOD's point of view.

I think this edict is likely headed down the same path. What would I do if anyone asked me (which they won't)? I'd take one government segment that no one cares much about. The folks building the border wall that no one but Donald Trump wants perhaps. And I'd promise them all the resource they needed and tell them to go 100% IPv6 and document all their problems (existing gear that CAN'T do IPv6 and has no off the shelf replacement for example) then write a conversion manual. Then I'd have two or three other organizations try to follow that conversion manual. Then I'd have them write a guide for the rest of the government. Then, and only then, would I start laying down mandates. And only if I still thought 100% IPv6 was a good idea.

Surprise! Plans for a Brexit version of the EU's Galileo have been delayed

Re: Good

Not only is its coverage area limited, QZSS satellites are essentially additional GPS satellites. If GPS is down QZSS is almost certainly down as well. What QZSS buys the Nihonjin is reduction in multipath precision problems in dense urban areas as well as improved vertical accuracy within its target area (Japan), Wikipedia says it's operational with 4 satellites with 3 more to launch shortly. Cost 170B JPY = about 1.2B pounds. Could Britain do something similar? Probably. But you'll still need GPS. Not to mention that it wouldn't provide coverage for most of the tiny specks of land that constitute the remaining British Overseas Territories.

Total Inability To Service User Pulls: GitHub wobbles with a good old Thursday TITSUP

Re: If you store your project code on an online repository...

I don't use Github because I don't need it. And for the most part it's too complicated for my aging mind. But my understanding is that Linus Torvalds wrote git to handle collaborative efforts that were too complex for RCS, Subversion, et. al. That kind of suggests to me that there are times when some folks really need the "official" version of code, not their local copy/copies.

Firefox now defaults to DNS-over-HTTPS for US netizens and some are dischuffed about this

Re: Well, there goes home internet filtering

And you don't think your kids know how to change the DNS settings on the PC?"

And if they don't know how, they almost certainly have friends that do.

'I give fusion power a higher chance of succeeding than quantum computing' says the R in the RSA crypto-algorithm

Different problems

Allow me to point out that using quantum technology to crack encryption is an entirely different class of problem than fusion power. Cracking encryption -- especially for encrypted material you already have -- only requires your cracking technology to work when everything is just right. It can fail dismally most of the time and still be extremely useful on the rare occasions when it works. Fusion on the other hand would appear to need to work VERY reliably in order for it to be useful for anything other than rapid urban renewal.

Lovely quote

"Blockchain is the wrong security technology for voting, I like to think of its as bringing a combination lock to a kitchen fire,"

What a marvelous quote.

The problem with blockchain is that it's a nifty technology that doesn't seem to be a really good answer to any known problem.

How many times do we have to tell you? A Tesla isn't a self-driving car, say investigators after Apple man's fatal crash

Re: But how about those batteries?

I'm inclined to agree, that the contribution of Lithium per se to battery fires is not all that big a deal. What **IS** an issue is that electric car batteries pretty much by definition contain a lot of energy in a small volume. If they didn't, they wouldn't be much use. The question is how one safely discharges a "fuel tank" that potentially contains several hundred million Joules. Especially when the control hardware and maybe even the external connections are possibly damaged. There's quite likely enough energy there to heat a house in a mild climate for months. In many cases, simply waiting for the battery to self-discharge may be the simplest and safest way to deal with it. (A fence and a few warning signs might be appropriate precautions).

Re: Frankly ...

"I haven't seen the very clear "off-lane"/"on-lane" as used in the entirety of Europe anywhere in the US

No offense, but I can't figure out what you're talking about. I wouldn't argue that all US traffic control markings are great, because many are less than superb. But I've driven in Germany a bit, and I don't recall that the road markings there were especially awesome. Could you perhaps clarify a bit?

Re: Company Policy: "Don't Do Illegal Stuff"

OK, I shouldn't use my cell phone while my vehicle is moving. I'm fine with that. (But what if it's providing driving instructions -- as many are able to do)?

But checking my fixed mount GPS, speedometer, dash panel gauges, and rear view mirrors or cameras are every bit as distracting, and I'm supposed to check most of those regularly. How do we reconcile that with simplistic notions about driver attention?

Re: Tesla never said it's driverless

The problem is that it does it’s autonomous driving so well that progressively drivers become complacent .

Exactly. If "Autopilot" (or whatever it's called) didn't work pretty reliably, drivers wouldn't use it. Just as they disable electronic "traction control systems" in other vehicles on really slippery roads after their vehicle visits the bushes a few times. The problem seems to be that "autopilot" (like ETC) mostly works. In the case of Autopilot that's probably exacerbated by the fact that at highway speeds, there just may not be enough time for even a fully alert driver to determine that the vehicle is about to to try to kill one and react to defeat its homicidal instincts.

I think that it is past time to for regulators to step in and develop RIGOROUS standards for ALL automated safety aids in automotive applications. If that delays the accumulation of untold wealth by autonomous vehicle mongers a bit, I suppose that's unfortunate. But it really does seem to be necessary.

Microsoft polishes Sphere, carts backups off to Azure – and mystery mobile claims to run Windows 10 and Android

Worse places in the world for a surprise hike

There are, we suppose, worse places in the world in which to enjoy a surprise hike.

For example, try Interstate 87 -- the main highway between New York City and Montreal. Cell phone reception on I87 in the Adirondack Park region has always been notoriously unreliable -- so much so that emergency phones are still maintained at two mile intervals along one lengthy, thinly populated, stretch North of Albany. Winter temperatures in that area regularly fall to 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18C). Sometimes lower. Occasionally, much lower.

The Wristwatch of the Long Now: When your MTBF is two centuries

Re: Beware survival bias

I believe that some high end laptops still come with parallel "printer" ports. I think those might be fast enough to talk to 8 inch floppy drives ... with a bit of supporting hardware that you'd probably have to homebrew. Do you reckon that your 8 inch floppies will still read after 40 years or so? A few years ago, I tried to recover some software from 30 year old 5.25 and 3.5 inch disks. Some would read. Many wouldn't. Sic transit glorium datum. (apologies to anyone who remembers how to actually handle number and gender in Latin).

Re: such craftsmen could not possibly survive

What largely put the old watchmakers out of business was when Timex started stamping out zillions of inexpensive durable watches back around 1950. In most cases, when one broke -- which didn't happen all that often, it was cheaper to buy a new watch than fix the old one. They were pretty sturdy. I wouldn't be at all surprised that many of those 70 year old Timex watches are still running.

Re: Beware survival bias

"But I am trying to instil in him the idea that one should use durable goods until they no longer are fit for purpose."

Indeed. I am still using hammers, saws, files, chisels, screwdrivers and other tools that my dad bought at estate sales in the 1920s and 1930s. Some are surely more than a century old. They work fine. I did retire the brace and bits a decade ago when we finally got battery powered drills that could be relied upon to finish an outdoor job without waiting hours for one or more battery recharges.

The modern obsession with constant "maintenance" seems to me largely a fad like the huge decorative fins that American cars sprouted in the 1950s. Why would anyone want to wake up every morning not knowing if the manufacturers have (yet again) broken their critical toolchain(s) overnight?

This too shall pass. At least one hopes it will.

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

NASA

"he was killed by NASA ..."

If NASA were involved, it would be a multidecade project requiring hundreds of millions of dollars. They would still be working on the Request for Proposal. Hughes would likely die of old age before the project came to fruition.

If Hughes was the victim of foul play, it was probably a drug deal gone bad, or some good ol' boy who was convinced that Hughes' rocket had somehow caused his chickens to stop laying.

Xerox hopes wining and dining HP shareholders will convince them of takeover

Hey, it's a free meal

It's a free meal. And an opportunity to judge how qualified these financial geniuses are to conduct a really first class pump and dump operation on HP's stock.

Voatz of no confidence: MIT boffins eviscerate US election app, claim fiends could exploit flaws to derail democracy

Re: 27 times? In the world of DevOps and so-called "agile"?

27 updates? Why doesn't that make me feel more secure?

Re: I'm baffled

"If your mobile banking application is compromised, you will find out when you receive the next statement from your bank, the details of all transactions will be there for you to see. If you dispute any of them, there is a clear process to follow, which (in exception of cases of gross negligence) will result in any losses bing refunded."

On top of which, the money has to GO somewhere, and cobbling together a transaction chain that can't be traced to the miscreants is a non-trivial job. It's sort of like counterfeiting. Doable, but likely to be an inordinate amount of effort and quite risky as well.

Hacking a voting program is likely easier and less risky. And there's likely no meaningful audit trail.

Cache me if you can: HDD PC sales collapse in Europe as shoppers say yes siree to SSD

Re: And..

"But when it didn't work ..."

Which was, in my experience, maybe half of the time. On paper, plugging a proper resistor bank into the final device in the chain canceled signal reflections and made everything fly along. In practice, not always. Sometimes some combination of terminators on the "other" devices in the chain would make things work. Sometimes not. In which case, plan C was to rearrange the chain -- not always easy because of cable length and connector spacing. And sometimes THAT didn't work. Leaving Plan D -- swap out devices with different, functionally equivalent devices. Labor intensive? You bet.

I, for one, wasn't sorry to see SCSI in the rear-view mirror of technical progress.

Astroboffins agog after spotting the first repeating fast radio burst that pings every 16 days from another galaxy

Re: Carefull

And half the sites on the internet will include Javascript that autoexecutes a reading of the alien message by Kanye West over, and over, and over. There will be a Close button on the video. But, being Javascript, it will take between seven and thirteen minutes to work once activated.

Fortunately, The round trip latency for these radio bursts will be about six billion years, so we don't have to worry to much about folks calling in to the station and requesting their favorite Volgon poem.