Posts by Caver_Dave

AWS puts datacenter in shipping container for the Pentagon

Re: scary testing

I've seen a video of a communications switch in an aircraft flight control system, swapped mid-flight.

Part of the redundancy and recovery testing.

I've spoken to one of the guys in the video and they were not wearing parachutes!

US military spends weekend shooting down Useless Floating Objects

Re: Stupid Brandon administration

What China are doing is sending different types and size of 'aircraft' to check what the US radar can pick up.

So it is a 'scientific' experiment.

Learn the art of malicious compliance: doing exactly what you were asked, even when it's wrong

Valentines

I've bought my wife a Valentines present that will leave her breathless.

A treadmill.

And remember a washing line is both solar and wind powered!

Coffee

I don't drink coffee, but I have been known (probably less than a dozen times) to make the instant stuff in the cupboard for visitors.

When I started a new job the boss asked me to make coffee for the team.

Freshly ground coffee (they were coffee snobs it turned out) looked pretty similar to instant to me, and so I just chucked some in a cup, added boiling water and stirred.

Que "are you trying to poison us", "are you trying to get sacked on the first day", etc.

I was never asked again.

What's up with IT, Doc? Rabbit hole reveals cause of outage

Re: They don't only like cables

I used to commute past there and wondered why they hadn't all been blown at once. Have one ->

No, you cannot safely run a network operations center from a corridor

Re: Lightening

I got hit in the entrance to Tathams Wife Hole in Yorkshire, England. It turns out that the cool cave entrances emit a column of negatively charged ions which attracts the lightening.

It hit the coiled metal ladder attached to my belt on the way to ground. I was wearing a wetsuit and Wellington Boots which were all soaked and kept the worst of it with away from my body. I received a burn down my leg along the vertical seam in the wetsuit and was deaf in the closest ear for a few months.

Icon, because that's what I could have been!

Tech CEO nixes AI lawyer stunt after being threatened with jail time

Music from code

I worked with someone last century whose research thesis involved turning code into music in the expectation that good code would sound good and bad code would be discordant.

He was also a 'top ten' trance music composer and had a side-line in lift music.

I can't think that AI music will be much better.

Icon: because that seemed to be everywhere at the time :-)

New IT boss decided to 'audit everything you guys are doing wrong'. Which went wrong

Standard MBA training

Come into a new position and make your mark by changing everything "for the better".

Make lots on bonuses.

Leave for next lucrative job, before you have to clean up from this one.

Seen it in all companies I have worked for with more than 20 employees.

It's not just IT, take the UK's NHS (on a slightly longer timescale) going around and around with the same 'local group' reorganisations in roughly 5 year cycles.

Artificial pancreas successful in type 2 diabetes tests

Diet

As a T2 who has done a lot of amateur research in the condition I can agree with what you have said.

My family has a genetic disposition, both active parents (outdoor manual jobs) had it for years, and my brother was diagnosed within a few months of me, (who at the time was digging trenches by hand all day long).

I had to take a compulsory (Desmond) course run by the NHS when I was diagnosed. I was the youngest attendee by about 2 decades and the lightest by at least 6 stones. When I was checked a couple of months before diagnosis, I was 5% body fat!

The biggest factor in the prevalence of T2 Diabetes is the NHS advice to cut down on fat. This has led to the population's diet becoming carbohydrate heavy, which leads to the extra weigh and places too much strain on the Pancreas causing it to become less efficient or stud down. It's the same as any engine - run it too hard and it will not last as long!

Nice smart device – how long does it get software updates?

Re: Nobody

I have a watch that is capable of telling me when the 30 minute wash finishes. In addition it can tell me when the 60 minute and 90 minute washes finish. All I need to do is look at it an do some very simple maths, or alternatively set a simple alarm.

Re: Nobody

What happens if your service plan extends longer (e.g. 5 years) than the software support (e.g. 2 years) and there is a serious software flaw found between the two dates (e.g. years 3 - 5)?

IANAL, but that seems interesting

Fat EVs may cause 'more death on our roads' – watchdog

Re: Temporary Problem

If EV technology had advanced as much as ICE over the past 130 years, then your battery would be the size of your fist, you would just swap it at the forecourt and would last 1000 miles.

That NHS England patient data platform procurement, FDP, is live. And worth up to £480m

MP waste of space

Yup, same here. Mine's too busy flying backwards and forwards to Northern Ireland to answer himself and his minions just answer with the standard bureaucratic lines of "just think of the children", "if you have nothing to hide", "security is our primary concern", etc. to everything.

Our Unitary vehemently objects to weight limits and speed limits. I know because I have been trying for years to get them in our village, whose narrow roads are used as a rat run by Artic's. However, one has just been placed in our MPs village, contravening at least 2 of the Unitary's main opposition points!

Re: A modest suggestion

A conversation related to me, had me checking a few facts.

Firstly, the term ‘Junior Doctor’ refers to someone who has:

* completed the minimum 5 years of University education,

* is completing the next 2 years compulsory foundation training,

* is completing the next 3+ years of compulsory specialty training,

* or has completed all the training but is not a consultant.

(At least 10 years training – more that 3 times a standard degree in say, PPE that our politicians all seem to study.)

Claim: "There has been a 30% salary cut for Junior Doctors since 2008"

https://www.bma.org.uk/.../bma-ia-pay-restoration... shows this to be 26.1%, but with rounding in conversation this is not too much of an exaggeration.

https://www.imgconnect.co.uk/.../nhs-doctors-pay.../59 shows a basic salary after finishing University of £29,384 for a 40 hour week.

Claim: “Junior Doctors used to have paid accommodation.”

This was withdrawn in 2008 and is most likely why that year is used in the statistics above.

Claim: “All students have to pay back tuition fees for the years of University education.”

Many intercalate extra courses within that initial 5 years to get a broader education. E.g. my daughter did an MSC in Nutrition (with diet being a major contributory factor in so many health conditions) taking that to 6 years – double the costs of a standard 3 year degree in other subjects. With current students’ tuition fees of £9,250 per year for 6 years that is £55,500 in debt, before accommodation, food or any other living costs are taken into account.

So, if a Doctor finished their training in 2008 they would be better off than someone finishing their training in 2022 to the tune of:

* At least £45,000 in tuition fees

* At least 10 years of free accommodation

* 26.1% more real terms wages

Rather depressing when as the general public, we want the best people to become Doctors, as our life in literally in their hands.

Re: It's just another asset to be sold

Judicial reviews are all fine and well but...

We were told as a Parish that we had a very good case to take our new Unitary Authority to Judicial Review, as it changed rules pertinent to a parishes ability to object to planning applications without telling parishes. (The Unitary rules had previously been used in two of the now conjoined Districts, but not the third - ours.)

Previously a highly contentious Planning Application, that the Parish vehemently objected to on behalf of the residents, would have automatically gone to the Planning Committee, because of the Parishes objection.

We only found out about the changes later, (when we asked why the application was not on the Planning meeting agenda), that this application was waved through by a Planning Officer, as we had not followed the new procedure that we had not been informed about.

Said Planning Officer could see that there had been no objections (in the new system that nobody had told us about) and based their decision on 'an expert' report of someone the Unitary had employed, but who admitted on page 1 that they had not actually been to the site.

However, as a Parish our precept is £15,000 and it costs £90,000 to even start the JR process, so there is no way that we could go down that route.

Forget the climate: Steep prices the biggest reason EV sales aren't higher

Re: A 1000km each way trip (common here)

The UK government say that you should take a break every 2 hours.

Let's expand that to 3 hours for the sake of comparison and your strong bladder. That would lead to 2 breaks on your journey. That for many people that would equate to meal breaks, where you eat while the car recharges. Mine charges in the 30 minutes I eat and therefore there is no added time.

Those 3 x 333Km legs are well within the range of many modern EV's.

Therefore, your only real problem is the lack of infrastructure.

I previously had a 9 month old plug-in hybrid Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV for 4 years. I part-exchanged it for significantly more than I bought it for!

If I am struggling to find a charger, my order or preference is large out-of-town supermarkets, out-of-town McDonalds or out-of-town Costa. Some supermarkets are more geared up than others, but most McDonalds and Costa (at least the newer ones) seem to have some limited charging and many seem to operate outside of the store opening times.

Re: "a strong desire to reduce refueling costs"

And most, if not all, require you to pre-load some money onto them, which if unused is just earning the company interest and not available for me to use. For at least one supplier, we pre-loaded and then the charger did not work, and we've not come across another one of that type to use up the money.

Only 7 apps so far for us, but then our holidays are in our VW Transporter Camper, and I've not done a journey in the electric requiring more than 2 charges.

Re: "a strong desire to reduce refueling costs"

As someone who had a plug in hybrid for many years and now has a Nissan Leaf, I can say that the answer is complex.

If you use your car like we do: charging up at home and mostly commuting under the range of the vehicle each day, then yes, it is much cheaper to run. And there are less moving parts and so the servicing costs are lower.

However, if you need to charge up on public chargers then it is a different case, with costs from our experience of more than ICE on journeys requiring charging en-route. Charging is getting more and more expensive, the charging network is too small (causing queues at the chargers) and the number of chargers not working is far too high (which is the range anxiety element for us).

There are apps that tell you where chargers are, if they are in use and if they are working, which reduces most of the range anxiety, to a case of planning. The difficulties are not much different from the early days of petrol vehicles with lack of garages and not knowing if they had fuel.

Intel: Please buy these new 13th-Gen CPUs, now with 24 cores

Re: Confusing or what?

Worse still.

If the experience of my i9 not being supported by Windows 11 is anything to go by, a good proportion of these 48 processors won't be supported by Windows 12.

Miniature nuclear reactors could be the answer to sustainable datacenter growth

Re: "glow-in-the-dark grandfather clock"

The vast majority of nuclear waste is low-level. That means it has an output per m3 of less than a 1950's luminous watch!

Intel settles to escape $4b patent suit with VLSI

Re: they basically get a monopoly...

4 times I have independently invented physical devices, built and tested them. (One was a device that looked about the size of a Yorkie Bar, but that when held in the hand had 5 buttons that when pressed in combinations, used voice synthesis to speak. The processor was Z80, just to show how long ago this was!)

All 4 times I have approached manufacturers who have performed patent searches to find that each of my inventions might possibly infringe an obscure patent or two (none of which have been taken into production by the patenter, as far as we could tell.)

Patents are often used just to stop innovation or a complete marketplace!

Also, I made a clockwork radio for Craft, Design and Technology 'O' level submitted coursework at school. Prior art that might have annoyed Trevor Baylis, but probably not, as he seemed such a nice guy. RIP

Musk's Hotel California erected at Twitter HQ, as some offices converted into bedrooms

"Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade."

I worked for a very large, 2 letter name, US company for a while.

I out performed my peers by a considerable margin one year and was given a "role model" rating.

The next year I did the same and was rated as "average", as my performance scale was moved to reflect last years achievements.

Consequently, many of my peers gained a higher rating (and the associated pay increase) even though I provably was of greater value to the company.

"Copula hock in lido militum" I left.

Corporate egos should go, to be replace by work life balance.

Not all vendors' Arm-powered kit is created equally, benchmark fan finds

A meal is a selection of menu items.

This is not uncommon.

ARM is basically a menu of IP that you gather into your SOC with your own glue logic and IP.

As with all designs, you can make choices in this, trading speed, power, size and functionality.

US Air Force reveals B-21 Raider stealth bomber that'll fly the unfriendly skies

Digital twins

A digital twin means that they can f*ck it up virtually without crashing the plane and you can have hundreds of people working on the problem relatively cheaply, each with their own virtual plane (or part of the plane).

There are a number of commercial platforms (and probably a few secret ones) this might be based on.

I know that one of the best features of the Wind River tool, for instance, is the ability to 'run time backwards' to see what led up to the problem.

The use of Agile does not mean that DO178C (or other standards) cannot be achieved. It is just a method of deciding and controlling which activities are being concentrated on at any one point in time (sprint). It is simply a different way of decomposing a project. I prefer the decomposition into 'components' with their own requirements, code and test (with all the DO178C controls) for later integration under the overarching PSAC, SCMP, etc. But it's horses for courses, or Managers latest fad.

UK cuts China from Sizewell nuclear project, takes joint stake

Re: Also

"Yet still there will be some people under the influence of green madness!"

The overall aim is commendable, indeed required for humanities long term survival.

The problem is that we are playing catch-up from years of nuclear being persona-non-grata to the governments of all colours, and we need power now. Coal is a regrettable short term necessity to cover the cold, still and foggy winters days when most of our renewables are not producing.

I am happy to see that more of the future nuclear build-out funding is coming from within the UK.

Perhaps the thought of nationalisation will stick in many throats, but the utilities and transport ought to be owned within the UK rather than the dividends going abroad on the back of all the years of UK citizens funding to build up the industries in the first place?

BOFH: We're an industry leader … in employing idiot managers

Re: Stoned Badger

I've not seen one stoned.

But I have seen a whole set drunk after eating rotting Apples.

They had two states: nearly asleep and fighting.

I only found them due to the noise they were making.

Croatian EV maker Rimac claims 412km/h speed record

Re: Not enough range.

I used to tow with a Mitsubishi Outlander when they first came out in a plug-in hybrid form.

We were camping one Easter just north of London, when it rained and turned the field into a shallow lake.

The faux 4x4's were getting stuck even trying to hitch up to the caravan and were making an awful mess.

The site wardens watched me drive very slowly from the car park onto the grass, hitch up in the lake and drive away both silently and without a single wheel spinning, and reported it in a magazine. The immediate torque of the electric drive was brilliant for such things and driving in the snow (and pulling away from lights much faster than most ICE cars ;-) )

Above 20mph the petrol engine was engaged, because as Jake said, the wind resistance really saps the battery.

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

Re: Now ask me why ...

One very old story.

My English grandfather had just captured a German position with his mates near the end of the Second World War.

I said it was an old story!

It was pissing it down and they retired to a half standing barn, which just happened to contain some bottles of beer. Having no animosity with the individual Germans they shared the bottles. After a few my grandfather enjoyed watching a very drunk Glaswegian and fairly drunk German carrying on a conversation in their own languages and apparently making sense to each other.

Re: You get what you order

1990's I had a 'touch' with the rear bumper of another car when they stopped suddenly 1/2 way across a junction. It had cracked the fog light lens, but not damaged the bulb inside. There was hardly anyone about and no other cars around. I exchanged details with the driver (who was on his own) and heard nothing more.

2 (two) years later I had a call from MY insurance company insisting that one of their loss adjusters visited me at my work. I rang the company back on their published number as it seemed like a scam to me, but the company said that they could see the booking in their electronic diary.

The guy came around as was VERY heavy handed wanting to know why I had not spoken to them in the last 6 months to report the accident. Did I know that was a criminal offence, etc.? As I had no accident since that 'touch' it took me a while to work out who I had "rear-ended at high speed writing off the car."

Obviously, the guy in the other car had another accident and was trying to blame it on me. I argued this, pointing out that the car would have passed at least one MOT since the 'touch' I had, and so I could not be responsible. But this was apparently trumped by the 3 people in the car that I had written off and the 3 people in the car following me, witnessing the accident 6 months previously.

The ultimatum was pay £300, or be reported to the Police for not reporting the accident and be placed on the insurance black-list and never be able to get insurance again.

Talking later to people in the insurance business and Police, this sort of fabrication was quite common and with the "witnesses" there is nothing you can do about it. As soon as dash-cams became available I bought one!

Tired: Data scientists. Wired: Data artists

Buses (at least used to be) replaced when they reached a certain mileage. Thus if you can reduce the wear so that more of them reach the replacement mileage before a major breakdown occurs, then you are quids in.

This whole topic is just a rehash of the old consultancy rule. "Consultants never tell you something that wasn't already known in the organisation."

All the US midterm-related lies to expect when you're electing

I ask my American colleagues (who are all university graduates at various levels) to answer some questions I have about US politics.

Nearly all questions are replied with a Gaelic shrug.

Parody Elon Musk Twitter accounts will be suspended immediately, says Elon Musk

He spent a lot of money 'proving' that he can call anyone a "Pedo" without any proof, and now he's suddenly all against free speech.

Qualcomm vs Arm: The bizarro quotient just went off the scale

Tactics

"You want a particular CPU? Terribly sorry, but there's a really long lead time on that part – unless you also buy the rest of our support chips... then we can do business. It's unethical, usually illegal, and even the biggest names look the other way when their sales teams do it."

Also used by distributers who only have bundles in stock and not the individual device you want. - Different wording, same game.

Windows 11 runs on fewer than 1 in 6 PCs

Yes, I have the correct TPM, enough memory and fast drives, and a fast i7.

However, Windows 11 only supports certain i7. If they can't be arsed to test all of the processors, then I can't be arsed to load it! Simples!

UK comms regulator rings death knell for fax machines

Re: Faxing is often better

My wife used to run a small Pharmacy embedded in a Doctors building and then was a trouble shooter across a large area for one of the 'top 3' multiples. Everything was electronic at both ends of the size spectrum in England.

The only problem I've ever had using the service is due to the multiple sites served by the practice. If you visit the Dr. at one surgery many miles away (so that you can actually see a Doctor as the local one has no appointments) they will only dispense the medicines at that surgery and not your local one. So another 30 mile round trip is required!

Pagers

They still do use them in at least one Hospital my eldest has worked in recently, when on-call for multiple wards on the night shift.

Can gamers teach us anything about datacenter cooling? Lenovo seems to think so

Cost is key

I used to work in the rugged board industry.

Think, conduction (board edge) cooled, -45 to +85C ambient temperature, with many of the current generation high end processor and graphics devices.

Your water/refrigerant/etc. is contained in the solid rack holding the boards and so is kept well away from the electronics.

However, this all costs the sort of money which restricts the markets to those that can bear the expense.

My high-end home PC is all conduction cooled (with off-the-shelf parts) and solid state discs - so silent. :-) (about 20% more cost than a noisy behemoth!)

The boss worked in a fishbowl, so office tricks were a treat

Same set up in geographically the middle of the UK as mobile coverage does not cover, despite the (multiple) operators protestations to the contrary.

India's – and Infosys's – favorite son-in-law Rishi Sunak is next UK PM

And he was successful in business before politics.

That should be a pre-requisite, and not come straight from a PPE degree.

To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess

Re: Bad design

Assembler routines for Nokia 2110.

Noise reduction and echo cancellation filters in fixed number of clock cycles. Only one NOP used to even the timing in one of the filters and none in the other!

Re: Bad design

I have been in the industry as long in this century as the last.

Old style phone I have no problem with - hell, I programmed some of them!

However, modern smart phone are the bane of my life. I often have to ask my children when I can't find some simple function.

Instructions along the line of ...

"swipe left 3 times, find the little gear wheel, 3rd option down, go down to the third page of settings, choose XYZ button, then choose the correct option from the drop-down - it's obvious!"

...drive me up the wall!

How did ESA's gamma ray-spotting 'scope make it to 20? They totally overdid it

Re: In space, you can't underdesign

And it's why your OS of choice is Wind River VxWorks.

(The 'new boys' to this field; Green Hills Integrity and QNX might also suffice, but don't have the track record of 30+ years. There's even a cut down Linux on the Mars Helicopter as it was expendable.)

How GitHub Copilot could steer Microsoft into a copyright storm

I am not a lawyer

but have I got this right?

If I completely independently create some code that happens to be the same as some Microsoft code, they will sue me for breach of copyright.

But if their AI copies some copyrighted/copy-left code verbatim, then that is alright.

Loathsome eighties ladder-climber levelled by a custom DOS prompt

CPX16

Epson had a computer, the CPX16, around that time that could boot on a Z80 processor in CP/M, or on a 'V' series 8086 clone running MSDOS.

A carefully written program Binary would run on both!

Rookie programmer's code goes up in flames ... kind of

Re: Déjà Vu

Recycling comments?

No, working in IT does not mean you can fix anything with a soldering iron

I break your rule

Chartered IT Professional (CITP) circa 20 years

IEEE 30+ years

Software Engineer - currently certifiable OS

Previously first in-car telemetry for F1 (circuit boards, radio coms, etc.), first DECT based control system (circuit boards, radio coms, etc.), even a DSP based ECU for an F1 team (circuit board and writing the macro assembler to program it.) Add in complete logging system for a heritage jet aircraft (mech eng, circuit boards and software) and you can see that there are some of us who can do both, and a lot more.

Icon as some 'friends' refer to me as the "high tech spanner", which I hope is meant to be a compliment referring to mechanical, electrical, electronic and software skills.

I also use the "too expensive for you to afford" reason for not helping family, friends, etc.

Re: Live Printer

When we moved into our current house there was a jacuzzi bath installed. Knowing the previous occupant was a bodge artist I took the side panel off the bath to see the jacuzzi plugged into a trailing socket underneath! (Empty sockets pointing skywards!)

Same bodge artist had used "bell wire" for part of the upstairs lighting circuit.

Competent electrician had agreed that a rewire was required, even before he got a couple of belts in the attic space while trying to trace some of the existing (and supposedly isolated at the fuse box) wiring.

Fire icon, as I don't know why we never had one before the rewire.

UK politico proposes site for prototype nuclear fusion plant

Great Britain

Britain became great as it lead the world in creating and using technology and power.

Britain started the First Industrial Revolution : Mechanisation & Steam engines

Britain was a leader in the Second Industrial Revolution : Steel, chemical synthesis, television, telephone, telegraph & Internal combustion engines

Britain was a leader in the Third Industrial Revolution : Electronics, computers, Internet & Nuclear power

Britain could be a leader in the Fourth Industrial Revolution : Automation, virtualisation & Fusion power

In each one see that the last item was an advancement in energy production. There are brilliant minds in GB despite the brain-drain abroad, they just need the right focus and more importantly funding. But, given the vast costs of advances these days, they should be ready to commercialise, but not stop their collaboration with the existing projects.