* Posts by Wellyboot

2255 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2018

Labour: Free British broadband for country if we win general election

Wellyboot Silver badge

Labour, Pro remain? That rather depends on which constituency you are in when you ask. (London yes, rest of country - not so much)

Leaving the EU is the only way most of the recent promised spendfest could happen. EU rules tie governments into a de-nationalising, no-subsidy, policy set. Unless the plan is to stay and then blame the EU for not being able to implement the promises like previous UK govts have done for decades.

Wellyboot Silver badge

There seems to be cut throat competition to provide the lowest level of service support possible to joe public.

Boffins show the 2017 Nork nuke can move, move, move any mountain (by a meter)

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Not a big problem, IMO - until

Indeed - IND-PAK is a mexican stand-off where they're also kicking each other in the shins.

Kashmir would have become another all out war years ago if it were not for the nukes lurking in the background, at the moment both sides seem content to trade one-off air strikes & artillery against 'terrorist' targets.

The Norks just want nukes to play with the big boys, being sandwiched between China and US backed South Korea would give any dictator throughout history sleepless nights.

Judge shoots down Trump admin's efforts to allow folks to post shoddy 3D printer gun blueprints online

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Why a 3D printed gun?

>>>turn a screw into a potential weapon<<<

TBF, it only needs the screw almost anything to have a non trivial momentum.

For those with gun making intent, banning blueprints will only thin out the 3D printer owners without the mental ability to design something roughly akin to a 14thC. hand cannon.

The question 'what constitutes a blueprint?', I think it's reasonable to say a blueprint is anything you can look at and use to make a reasonable copy, wikipedia is stuffed full of these drawings.

Gas-guzzling Americans continue to shun electric vehicles as sales fail to bother US car market

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: SUVs and pickups are just a lifestyle fad.

If the lifestyle involves weighing 20+ stone and not remembering the last time you saw your willy without a mirror then it's possible the SUV/pickup is the smallest vehicle that'll pass muster.

Attracting the opposite sex has also been a big driver in car selection by the younger crew anywhere there is available parking or less than exceptional public transport.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Elon may be right

EM is probably spot on - when the SUV & Pickups (especially pickups) arrive with 10 second qtr. mile times I'd expect brisk sales. Followed by YT videos of eejit passengers in the load area failing to hold on properly at launch.

237 UK police force staff punished for misusing IT systems in last 2 years

Wellyboot Silver badge

FOI says not good enough

The FOI release is pointing out far too many gaps in the monitoring across the UK police forces.

As for Surrey having the highest offender count, this line in the Surrey entry may go a long way towards the explaination The specialist teams that look for and tackle corruption have enough staff and resources ergo the others don't?

UK Home Office: We will register thousands of deactivated firearms with no database

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Until it's strung a longbow is just a stick, a bit hard to ban.

I believe it's still law that every englishman should practice for 2 hours a week.

Wellyboot Silver badge

As youngsters we played outside with an array of very real looking near life size toy weapons that these days would result in SO19 arriving.

Airsoft has toys you dare not show in public (plod would have no way of telling from across the street)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiDlIe0VzJU (from 2:24 is a minigun)

Wellyboot Silver badge
Joke

So as this just covers firearms, I'm ok to keep my collection of deactivated Polaris missiles without telling them?

Bloodhound rocket car target of 550mph put on ice after engine overheat

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Re: Dear AC

The current record is supersonic, the sonic bang was heard on both runs.

The target is in MPH because only us Brits & the Yanks have been mad enough to try this sort of stunt.

Wellyboot Silver badge
Flame

Re: How about this idea for an additional publicity stunt?

Toasty

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: I have a bad feeling about this project...

I'd like to think there is some serious computer based stability control going on as well!

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Dear AC

They're doing it because they think they can - like climbing Everest or going to the moon.

When they succeed Ian & Andy should never have to buy their own beer again.

To avoid that Titanic feeling, boffins create an unsinkable hydrophobic metal with laser power

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: antifoul

The red colour is most likely so they're easier to spot when capsized.

yes I spotted the joke :)

Beardy biologist's withering takedown of creationism fetches $564,500 at auction

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Darwin, top bloke.

Only having 2-3 ankle biters would be enough, if anyone intelligent can't manage to instil the incentive to learn in that few a number then what are they doing with their child rearing hours every day.

If procreation isn't your thing then adopting a new born will be just as effective.

All children are born inquisitive and with the determination & persistence that bare survival required, unfortunately far too many are literally years behind by the time formal education starts because they've only had a passive (or worse) interaction with the world during the years their brain was growing at its fastest. Then they grow up and repeat the problem. There's no easy way to break that cycle.

Wellyboot Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Darwin, top bloke.

Thus it is incumbent on 'intelligent' people to procreate rapidly so in the future we'll have enough smart people to 'science the s**t' # out of all the problems we keep finding (making?) in order to save civilization.

#'The Martian' is one good film to get the younglings interested in science

What do you get when you allegedly mix Wireshark, a gumshoe child molester, and a court PC? A judge facing hacking charges

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Oh come on...

I'd think the FBI would take her seriously if she'd gone to them about spyware worries on a court computer.

Sure, we made your Wi-Fi routers phone home with telemetry, says Ubiquiti. What of it?

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: I have been removing these for a while now for other reasons

Yup indeed, simply put it's 'Go fast' or 'Go long'

To extend the speed/coverage bubble you could splash out on some higher gain antenna if that's legal where you are.

What is this, 1989? Laplink is still a thing and wants to help with Windows 7 migrations

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Cables, CDs?

Lifesavers! and the third amigo was Spinrite.

IBM stands for I Block Money, says sales rep: Big Blue sued yet again by its own staff over 'missing' commissions

Wellyboot Silver badge

Short sighted bean counting

Is there a bonus scheme in place for managers who can reduce the bonus payouts to their sales staff?

Remember the Uber self-driving car that killed a woman crossing the street? The AI had no clue about jaywalkers

Wellyboot Silver badge

Onboard automatic brakes switched off.

>>because when it was switched on, the vehicle would act erratically.<<<

The car would not act erratically, it would behave exactly as Volvo intended.

The mismatch between when the Volvo (millions of installations?) and Uber (prototype) systems would decide to apply brakes should have been a gaint flashing neon 'problem' sign to Uber that required immediate attention, also the dozens of other crashes does point to the system being totally unready for use on public roads.

Socket to the energy bill: 5-bed home with stupid number of power outlets leaves us asking... why?

Wellyboot Silver badge

Show us the circuit breakers!

If the wiring has been done properly there shouldn't be any issues, you can always hide the unused sockets behind a bookcase.

My guess is the previous owner had cables made to length & didn't want to give the cable pixies any opportunity to tie knots.

edit: having spotted the uplighters in all the dormer windows I'm now also thinking OCD

'Peregrine falcon'-style drone swarms could help defend UK against Gatwick copycat attacks

Wellyboot Silver badge

Peregrine falcon drones

That sounds much more PR friendly than Kamikaze drones.

I'm hoping the command & control of these will be very very secure.

Linux kernel is getting more reliable, says Linus Torvalds. Plus: What do you need to do to be him?

Wellyboot Silver badge

His body has switched to comfort mode now he's approaching 50, many of us here have arrived at that point (and stayed for the beer).

I think he's good for a few more decades yet!

Remember the big IBM 360 mainframe rescue job? For now, Brexit has ballsed it up – big iron restorers

Wellyboot Silver badge
Coat

Re: Not the Crysis joke

It could with a rewrite....

Aliens positions shown on a printout updated at timed intervals.

Left / right / fire on punched card.

It would make for a easy post game tactics discussion.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Seriously?

I think the problem is the tail lift, though the weight limit itself shouldn't be a problem these tend to be standard only on non articulated box vehicles. Full size artics are normally expected to be loaded at a dock or by forklift so this does cut down the availability of suitable vehicles, but would two trips in a 18-ton box side blow the budget?

Basically it's just a heavy & fragile load that doesn't come in standard pallet sizes, most of the big UK hauliers will be able to shift this without a problem.

Microsoft explains self-serve Power platform's bypassing of Office 365 admins to cries of 'are you completely insane?'

Wellyboot Silver badge
FAIL

respecting organizations’ data governance and compliance

Those would be the policies that get you fired for installing unauthorized software on company equipment.

Are we going to see pop up adverts for this direct from the O/S?

Your kids will be glad a UK government-funded robot will be changing your nappy and not them

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: "make robots better protected against cyber-attacks"

Are you're saying after brexit all the programmers working in chinese based robot factories will change jobs?

I'm not Boeing anywhere near that: Coder whizz heads off jumbo-sized maintenance snafu

Wellyboot Silver badge

At least this software problem wasn't actually flying the 747. The IBM RS6000 was a new beast in 1990, how many people at the time knew that the C compiler would do that with those flags set? Obviously this is situation where 100% comparison test with the previous paper book seems justified.

Boeing gambled the companies entire future on the 747 being a success, it was built by a company that wanted to build the best machine possible and everyone involved knew that the effort put into the designs & actual metal bashing could be a deciding factor in the life or death of several hundred people. More to the point, Beancounters were not involved in the design decisions.

Half a century later Boeing gambles the companies future on a software cludge to shortcircuit the type certification process and produce a cheaper aircraft to buy.

The 737Max will forever have a bad smell associated with it because the decision was made to save money, far worse that the Comet-1 design problems due to the unknown effects of how metal fatigue happens, far worse than the DC-10 where shoddy maintenance brought them down. The only good things to come out of the Max will be that software will now be rated level with design & maintenance as a no-shortcut item and no airline will want to be seen buying self certified aircraft.

Aviation's been Boeing through a rough patch: Software tweaks blamed for Airbus A220 failures

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: re: Switching Aircraft Engine Types

I was thinking of the 500ish outstanding A220 orders that could possibly be switched to the newest CFM engines, that engine is on other current Airbus models and I don't think it'll cause positioning problems here like it did with the 737max.

Either way PW is on the hook for a large wedge of cash to get these engines fixed.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Both engines?

I think it's a straight 3:1 ration between the 'jet' & 'fan' parts of the engine to allow the fan blade design to be optimised for lower rotational speeds where the fan tips stay subsonic. But ICBW also.

Wellyboot Silver badge

>>>this would mean running at hotter temperatures, thus increasing maintenance costs<<<

This almost certainly involves burning extra fuel, with extra maintenance why would airlines even consider that? This is a modern airliner and hardly has to drag itself into the sky.

P&W are risking their reputation messing with the engine like this so early in its development, the FAA has already reduced the hub life limit on these engines after corrosion was found. Airbus could easily switch to another engine like the latest CFM56 used on B737max & A320neo types.

Now the US DoJ has charged Apple's insider trading lawyer with, er... well, it's embarrassing

Wellyboot Silver badge

I think stock as remuneration is ok as long as they can't sell it until a few years after they leave.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Tying your own noose...

Good luck finding a jury without a built in dislike for rich corporate lawyers.

Remember the 1980s? Oversized shoulder pads, Metal Mickey and... sticky keyboards?

Wellyboot Silver badge
Joke

Some cats know how to vent an opinion when you ignore them.

Slow down, ice-on-Mars fans: Those 'streams' on Red Planet may be caused by landslides

Wellyboot Silver badge

Possibilities are endless

Just send a set of geologists and some industrial sized core drilling equipment over there and actually find out.

We'll get a lot of answers very quickly. (and a lot of further funding if they strike oil)

Billionaire Bezos unveils plans to land humans on Moon, with a little help from some old friends

Wellyboot Silver badge

Kennedys " We go to the moon " was when NASA had only 2 flights and a total of 6 orbits.

At least this time all the problems & solutions are known, these announcements are just keeping up with the crowd.

I agree with the noobs comment, but they do have a very big crib sheet this time :)

I see your blue passport and raise you a green number plate: UK mulls rewards scheme for zero-emission vehicles

Wellyboot Silver badge

Good idea, my parents have been avoiding car journeys everyday since they retired.

Can it be backdated :)

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: @PhoenixKebab

There are over 38 million licensed vehicles on UK roads including over half a million HGVs, almost all are using oil derived power. The power requirement does not drop just because they all go electric. The HGVs will require battery charging in the MW range, spread across a day thats over 20,000 per hour and none of the UKs current truck stops have plug in points.

The UK oil refineries have a combined production capacity of some 60+M tonnes per year, I believe that the electrical power equivilent of the product is something like a constant 80GW, this is quite a bit more than the average 31GW national load the electrical system currently copes with.

Even with the lower % transmission loss of the electric grid compared to the thermal energy loss from ICE there is still a major national upgrade required to provide the power.

The idea that we can replace all current oil & gas powered devices with the current electric generation & transmission network capacity is laughable.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Green?

Some quick numbers - The normal UK parking bay is 2.4m x 4.8m. (8x16 ft. as was)

Nearly 60 years ago when the Ford Cortina mk1 was 1.55m Wid. x 4.28m Len (26cm of bay free at each end). - its 4.55m diagonal size was much shorter than the bay size and easy to parallel park.

Now a new Tesla S3 (slightly smaller than a VW passat) is 1.85m Wid. x 4.7m Len (5cm of bay free at each end)). with a diagonal of 5.04m you can't park this sized car in a bay without overlapping each of the adjoining bays by 12cm. It's not possible to park three S3 sized cars in three contiguous bays and for the middle one to exit. The other Tesla models are just outright longer than a bay (S-4.98m X-5.03m) as are many large familty cars & SUVs.

With Nose-in bays it gets worse, the Cortina has doors about 10cm deep while modern cars are about 25 deep (safety regs.), modern cars have about 5cm of open door gap when they reach the edge of their bay and about 35cm when they contact the next car over, The old Cortinas have 85cm between the cars. parking an SUV between two other SUVs requires exiting via the sun roof or rear.

Inside the 1TB ImageNet data set used to train the world's AI: Naked kids, drunken frat parties, porno stars, and more

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: AI Learning

They said MTurk has an >>>automatic quality control system in place to filter out spammers and problematic images<<<

Can we see that specific training set now and ask how was it created?

Google: We've achieved quantum supremacy! IBM: Nope. And stop using that word, please

Wellyboot Silver badge
Coat

Re: A company that sells ads versus a company that sells computers

Which one is better for Fortnite...

Japanese hotel chain sorry that hackers may have watched guests through bedside robots

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Receptasaurus

Oh yes, long term vegans will be the most sought after meat following the robot led collapse of society.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: More than robots

I must remember to pack tinfoil if I ever go to Japan.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: More than robots

From the 14th floor.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Hotel is staffed by robots

>>>does no one in the design and implementation of these 'ideas' ever watch movies<<<

Of course they do, but they all believe they'll be in the 0.0001% who don't have to eat recycled food (it's good for the environment and ok for you).

Hell hath GNOME fury: Linux desktop org swings ax at patent troll's infringement claim

Wellyboot Silver badge
Happy

Re: Gnome vs Troll

Gnome must Roll 8+ on a d20 to successfully avoid the trolls club and insert his shortsword+3 into part of the troll where he really doesn't want to get it back from.

Big Red tells crypto-coin publication: One does not simply call one's website 'OracleTimes'

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Must be nice

He also (still?) has a Mig-29 if he wants to get really in your face.

Wellyboot Silver badge
Joke

"oracle" is a term used in blockchain to define trusted data sources

There's the problem right there.