Posts by Chipfryer

How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer

Re: "......the mine had closed."

1998 in fact

From the author's description, this sounds like Geevor, which closed in the 80s, opened again and then closed. For a year or two it was mothballed and had a small income from tours but shut for good in 1990.

Mrs R and I went on one of these tours - 400m+ down the main shaft in a cage that did not so much fall as plummet and then a few hundred metres walk down an incline to go down another 200m or so. That did not take us to the last working face, just a side tunnel of old workings. Any equipment there would be a long way from connecting to anything on the surface!

The site is now a museum and while they have underground tours, the areas we went in 1990 have long been flooded.

The mine closure made everyone in the nearby villages redundant and there was much bitterness. Not a great time to be a tourist there and I can totally understand why. There was us on holiday and there was them facing a dismal future. We went in the local pub one evening and it all went quiet, like a scene from a film. The landlord said he would serve us (we had quite a walk to get there) but it was best for us to leave straight after.

Former Senator and one-time astronaut Bill Nelson named as NASA's new administrator

Re: Wait! Bill Nelson? There's only one Bill Nelson

Life in the air age is grim enough to make a robot cry and we could probably do without airships crashing every day into the bay.

On the other hand, switch on the sky, light up the stars!

Talking a Blue Streak: The ambitious, quiet waste of the Spadeadam Rocket Establishment

There's a small section of Blue Streak missile at the excellent Solway Aviation museum at Carlisle Airport.

A great museum, run by enthusiasts, with displays crammed full of info, plus you get to sit inside a Vulcan bomber. The opening hours are a bit restricted, so check first.

Two years ago, 123-Reg and NamesCo decided to register millions of .uk domains for customers without asking them. They just got the renewal reminders...

A co.uk domain that I had registered with 123 was allowed to expire well over a year ago. It was the only service that I had with 123 and at the time, no other domain was listed against my account. With no services left in 123's hands, I was entirely unaware that I still had any account or payment services with them until the renewal email came through in the last few days.

I first thought I had simply forgotten to expire the domain and that my memory was at fault but it wasn't until I read this article that I realised the "renewal" was for an unsolicited uk address, not my old co.uk one.

1Gbps, 4K streaming, buffering a thing of the past – but do Brits really even want full fibre?

Not everyone is aware that they can get higher speeds

Our village went FTTC last year with most houses on 0.5mb to 2mb before the upgrade. There was some publicity via the parish council minutes but there was no household notification process. It seems that quite a few people were and are simply unaware that they can switch to FTTC. Their lack of uptake is nothing to do with being satisfied with their existing speed, it's just ignorance of change.

I had a lot of problems with my new VDSL connection (low speeds and line drops) and eventually convinced my ISP to get Openreach to investigate. That was not a straightforward process and I suspect many people would not have seen it through - I eventually managed to provide evidence of heavy rain coinciding with crazy readings in DSLstats and provided a zoom lens photo of the ancient twin core drop line with lengths of cracked insulation.

The Openreach engineer replaced the drop line on seeing it and we now have a completely stable connection. Current up time 46 days at 40mb for a cabinet 600m away with a max attainable of 57mb. Suddenly HD and 4K streaming has become useable and has transformed our TV viewing. Alright, its not FTTP but compared to intermittent 2mb, it's fine.

I suspect our old drop line also affected our adsl speed but we're far from the only household here with drop lines like it. They're not all nerds - how are they going to know what to do? As far as I can see, they simply accept low speeds and line drops as part of normal rural broadband issues.

Ever seen printer malware in action? Install this HP Ink patch – or you may find out

Superflies

HP should be considering insect-based security vectors.

After initially thinking that either my network was hacked or my HP printer was haunted, when a series of beeps was followed by a test page print, I found the touchscreen was being activated by a fly walking across it.

I've no idea how it managed to swipe right to get to the Settings menu but I for one welcome our new insect overlords

Fix this faxing hell! NHS told to stop hanging onto archaic tech

I left local government six years ago, so things may have changed, but the NHS would not let local authorities email NHS Trusts anything with patient data in it as this was only permitted within the NHS using their own secure email system, which the NHS was not prepared for us to be a part of. We had to send everything by fax (mainly water and food-borne disease case notifications and outbreak questionnaires).

Given that all kinds of non-NHS organisations exchange medical data with the NHS, including employers that have to organise and assess regular routine screening of employees, one wonders how they get on.