Posts by David Hicklin

Toyota needs more than its Cheer Squad to deal with chip shortages, as five more home factories forced into idleness

"cancelling orders has made them not particularly good customers"

and what did you expect them to do when the factories and sales rooms were shutdown by the lockdowns and they could not make or sell any cars? Continue to have a flow of chips until the warehouses burst asunder ?

in some ways it was bad luck/timing that the meantime WFH created an overwhelming demand for laptops etc that gobbled up all the fab capacity not helped one little bit by global logistics being totally screwed up by covid - its a right mess out there!

Is that a meteor crashing to Earth? No, it's Chromebook makers coming back to reality

Re: Impressive

I think we can add 2021 as another statistical anomaly based on the shortages triggered by the events of 2020

Supply chain pain: Cisco's base price structure moving north from November

Re: Why do longer wait times cause higher cost

Prices rise when demand outstrips supply as people will then start paying more to get "X" quicker or when they want it

On the flip side a glut causes a price crash

Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?

Re: The new Win 7

More importantly does this mean that they will stop messing around with windows 10 and just do security updates ?

4 years of stability would be nice

Still using window 7 here....

Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram deplatform themselves: Services down globally

Re: In other news ...

At least it adds up to 100%.

Years of development, millions of lines of code, and Android can't even run a toilet

Bethselamin coming to Earth ?

"For years, the fabulously beautiful planet of Bethselamin increased its booming tourist industry without any worries at all. Alas, as is often the case, this was an act of utter stupidity, as it led to a colossal cumulative erosion problem. Of course, what else could one expect with ten billion tourists per annum? Thus today the net balance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from your body weight when you leave; so every time you go to the lavatory there, it is vitally important to get a receipt. "

So users are in trouble now - can't get a receipt !:

Fake 'BT' caller fleeces elderly victim of £30k in APP app scam

Re: Amazon iPhone 7

we just let any unknown number on the landline go to answer phone...they never leave a message.

Legitmate callers start making one and we can then just pick up the phone

Parking is expensive. It can cost an arm, a leg, and a Windows licence

Re: Buy petrol as normal, says government minister

Molotov cocktails in the subsequent riots. [Most dangerous Finnish invention after the sauna]

I think the Finns just gave it that name, in response to Russian bombing, but they didn't invent it.

I think they did name it that after the Russian foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov.

When everyone else is on vacation, it's time to whip out the tiny screwdrivers

"This is not strictly true. The Universe conserves screws but as screws are quantum objects they don't always materialise in the place you expect. Your surplus screw is someone else's "Why are there not enough screws left?"

It could also be that if you are a screw short, then it could be the one I could not find in my laptop disassembly instructions never mind how much we looked.

After one busted keyboard later it magically appeared along with its hole.

Re: Haynes Manuals

I guess we could fill a book or 2 with then tales of woe or miraculous escapes from the days of old and Haynes Manuals.

Mine is replacing the slipping clutch disk on a Vauxhall Viva in the mid 1980's between Christmas and the New year. Needed some space to work under it , had ramps and axle stands, of course slipping clutch says no the the ramps, so jacked/axle stands used to raise the front high enough then slot the ramps in, then use the stands on the rear.

so, sat underneath with a mate, sheets draped down the sides of the car to create a slightly warmer place in mid-winter - prop shaft dropped, gearbox dropped and there is the clutch pressure place in front with I think 6 bolts to remove, first 5 were easy, but number 6...no way.

After ending up with a round head decided to drill it out, started drilling then the bolt head started spinning round and the plate came away free , leaving the rest of the bolt in place with just a tiny bit sticking up.

someone must have decided to give me a late Christmas present, it was finger loose and came out very easily.

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

Re: A solution looking for a problem

Tesla have stats for accidents on their site. In Q1 2021, for example:

But are we comparing like for like here?

It could be that most drivers only switch on Autopilot whilst on motorways (freeways for the US) where there are fewer accidents per mile driven than in a built up urban environment with its many junctions, crossing and turning traffic etc

Re: About time too

The driver was "to blame" only insofar as he left it to the "autopilot" to decide what to do. Inattentive, yes, but reliant on the technology

Or a classic case of where the driver is expected to suddenly take over/correct the actions of the car having been lulled into a relaxed state where they are no longer aware of what is happening in real time.

One reason that anything other than level 5 automation will inevitably fail.

Scalpel! Superglue! This mouse won't fix its own ball

Re: Laptop Fans

Thought it was an air filter.

Had that here when I cleaned out my old laptop, dam of fluff in front of the exit grill kinda explained why the fan sounded like a jet going into orbit

Wireless powersats promise clean, permanent, abundant energy. Sound familiar?

Re: Lets do the maths

Then kill 2 birds with one stone - Gibraltar Straights Barrage Dam.

OK, It will mean moving a lot of stuff to fill in the deep bits but that solar power can power a lot of conveyor belts

Then you will have both a dam creating electricity and a dry overland route for the HV AC power lines to Europe

Undebug my heart: Using Cisco's IOS to take down capitalism – accidentally

Re: Yes, I've had a boss like that

"A4 size notice glued to the right hand side of the windscreen"

I had that many years ago when a colleague let me "borrow" his parking spot which was a LOT closer to the gate whilst he was on holiday and an over zealous security guy pasted it on my screen.

A squirt with WD40 promptly got it off!

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

Re: Nothing new

Spare parts have always had a big mark up, as pointed out they have to be stored (sometimes for years), catalogued and in some cases distributed 1 part at a time to where they are needed plus this is where most of the profit comes from (or used to, now they would rather you buy a new one)

Everyone cites that 'bugs are 100x more expensive to fix in production' research, but the study might not even exist

When I was working at an electrical engineering company we worked on a "5x rule", that after each stage (tender, design, production) it was 5x as expensive to fix that if the error/mistake had not been made in the first place.

Cyberlaw experts: Take back control. No, we're not talking about Brexit. It's Automated Lane Keeping Systems

Re: No

Don't give them ideas - they will just declare all existing signs are now "kmh" and 30 kmh will be the new 30mph speed limit!

United, Mesa airlines order 200 electric 19-seater planes for short-hop flights

Re: I wonder

"short-mayo-composite"

I thought it could take off but not carry any payload without the parent flying boat...

Books on the shelf above me somewhere....

NASA's InSight lander expected to survive most of summer before choking to death on Martian dust

Static Charge ?

Sounds like they need one of those static discharge strips that used to hang off the back bumper of cars then

Happy with your existing Windows 10 setup? Good, because Windows 11 could turn its nose up at your CPU

> whereas W10 will only get security updates.

Finally - some stability !

Like you HAVE to have an on-line account?

Racist malware blocks The Pirate Bay by tampering with victims' Windows hosts file

Re: Hostfile ?

Sadly in the windows world users have gotten very used to software installations asking for admin level access nearly all the time.

Gov.UK taskforce publishes post-Brexit wish-list: 'TIGRR' pounces on GDPR, metric measures

Re: engine blocks

when my last car (1.8 vauxhall vectra) went to the great scrap heap in the sky as it was generally worn out (185,000 miles), nothing actually broken until I ran into the end of an old volvo.

front of my car almost disintegrated, volvo did not have a scratch on it !

Re: The UK political sphere has been so overtaken by Brexit

Hey leave us boomers out of it - we are thoroughly metric.

Thanks, boss. The accidental creation of a lights-out data centre – what a fun surprise

Re: The Big Red Button

UK College in the 1980's, we were all stood around the corridor bored waiting for the lecturer , friend leaning on wall next to fire alarm...

no need to guess what happened.........

You can listen right here to the whir of a robot helicopter flying on an alien world

In Space no one can hear you scream

see title

Gone in 60 electrons: Digital art swaggers down the cul-de-sac of obsolescence

Re: Problem with Digital (F)Art...

Its the same with software that has to authorise itself at installation and the support servers no longer exist....

Re: Maplin Electronics

They are also part of long term project for me as well along with ETI, Computing Today.

Rather selective scanning, I'm only interested in the index, features and projects.

Something for the long dark winter evenings

Toyota buys Lyft’s autonomous car group for $550m

Re: Toyotas acquisition

"That will be a very long wait."

Absolutely : Anything less than level 5 automation is a total waste of time because:

A) Are they really expecting experienced drivers (like me) to sit behind the wheel poised to take control should the automaton crap out during my 1 or 2 hour commute (if and when it resumes) ? I might as well drive the car myself (I guess I am not the target audience)

B) level 4 and below still need a qualified driver, so the person in the car will still have to learn to drive and pass a test. But if a new driver spends most of his/her time poised over the wheel (as above) then 5 years down the line they will still have almost zero experience of actually driving. Expecting them to take over is an act of folly.

Case (B) has been shown to be an issue with airline pilots where the plane mostly flies itself, lack of awareness (Air France) or insufficient recent flying experience has caused more than one crash.

PCs continue to sell like hot cakes and industry can barely keep up with demand – analyst

refurbished kit ?

Try getting one at the moment, they have all been snapped up and are getting silly prices on ebay

George Clooney of IT: Dribbling disaster and damp disk warnings scare the life out of innocent user

Re: I remember a Apple joke

Still got it and it works! Desktop.exe. Every time you use the tool it "destroys" the screen a bit. Drop termites , let them eat the screen the splat them.

The Gatling is good for a bit of stress relief.

Re: I remember a Apple joke

Has something similar with my early windows PC, came with a Gatling gun to splat them.

NASA writes software update for Ingenuity helicopter to enable first Mars flight

Re: Applying patches .... please wait

"Obviously it's wherever Beagle 2 crash-landed."

I thought they had concluded that Beagle 2 actually made it down but the solar panels failed to deploy ?

For blinkenlights sake.... RTFM! Yes. Read The Front of the Machine

Re: Communicating with only obscenities?

"every second word begins with F, no matter what the subject"

sounds like our neighbours when in a full flowing argument - which is quite often and loud, hence they get through the walls

Facebook says dump of 533m accounts is old news. But my date of birth, name, etc haven't changed in years, Zuck

Re: I need to look this up

I get the same email and don't even have a camera, they could make a fortune selling technology that makes video without needing a camera !

Another successful flight for SpaceX's Starship apart from the landing-in-one-piece thing

Re: A long time ago, stuck in space far far away...

In the Lost Fleet books there is mention of early flights where the drive failed in hyperspace in such a way that they were stuck there until it just happened upon a point where it could exit into normal space.

Satellites, space debris may have already brightened night skies 10% globally – and it's going to get worse

Re: It doesn't actually get dark here.

I have noticed an improvement in the number of visible stars since LED lighting appeared, however nowhere near as good as my childhood when the streetlamp was a feeble incandescent bulb!

Bad news for automakers: That fire at the Renesas chip plant was worse than expected

Re: Timing is everything.

like everything in life:

Prices go up like a rocket

down like a feather

Profit !

Ship stranded in Suez Canal shifts, but not before spawning some choice tech memes

Re: I didn't sign up to twitter

I wish I could up vote the top poster more than once, the BBC may create articles reposting twitter but I expected better of The Register.

Yes, there's nothing quite like braving the M4 into London on the eve of a bank holiday just to eject a non-bootable floppy

Re: The other side of the coin

Or sitting in the queue to long will mess up the KPI's

Outsourced techie gets 2-year sentence after trashing system of former client: 1,200 Office 365 accounts zapped

More importantly, what are the chances of actually collecting that penalty ?

SK Hynix boss predicts CPUs and RAM will merge, chipmakers will hold hands to make it happen

Re: I'm left wondering...

Or your 16GB of on-chip ram becomes part system/part huge cache

OVH says burned data centre’s UPS, batteries, fuses in the hands of insurers and police

Re: 100A is current current.

Looks across to the APC UPS...227 currently.

It was also around the 252 mark before Christmas, then we had a power glitch and it dropped to around 225-230 since.

I vaguely remember reading ages ago that the UK grid used auto transformers to do crude voltage corrections at the substations - no idea if this is true however.

UK based

Starlink's latent China crisis could spark a whole new world of warcraft

Re: more than 4,000 orbiters by the end of 2021

Plus China planning 10,000 of their own, that will be one hell of a risk assessment needed for every human launch and return.

it will only take one ,,,,,

Four women, including TV star, thought they were investing in a software business. It was a scam. Now the perp's going to jail

Re: Odd custody arrangement

From the way this was reported it sounds like there was no actual court room in session and that he submitted all his pleas via PDF - I guess it is a covid thing

OVH data centre destroyed by fire in Strasbourg – all services unavailable

Re: Who knew data centres were tinder boxes?

Or false ceiling tiles

one place I worked at had a broom cupboard sized server room with halon, space above the ceiling tiles was shared with general offices.

Seagate UK customer stung by VAT on replacement drive shipped via the Netherlands

Re: It doesn't have to be this way.

And the VAT free on orders under £15 is also gone now we have left the EU.

Copper broadband phaseout will leave UK customers with higher bills and less choice, says comparison site

Re: Emergeny calls

Problem with mobile as found in Lancaster in 2012 is after a couple of hours without power the mobile masts die, not to mention the FTTC cabinets also die after a while.

No power situations are a serious problem.

UK watchdog fines two firms £270k for cold-calling 531,000 people who had opted out

Re: Lots getting away with it

we just let unknown callers go to answerphone, if they really want us they will start leaving a message and we can decide to pick up the phone or not