Posts by cipnt

SpaceX and Musk called on to rescue China's Shenzhou-20 crew

These narratives that Musk is a genius, an inventor, or in this case a saviour, are pushed by his guerrilla PR team and crypto bros.

I see no evidence of that; just an arrogant, entitled, rich prick.

Microsoft's ancient icon library still lurks deep within Windows 11

Exe file always included icons, for itself and for other purposes like for the OS to use for its specific file types.

Who gets a Mac at work? Here's how companies decide

Re: My nerdy formner CEO offered me a choice ...

Not true at all, although I've been a mac user for a decade...

EchoStar secures rights to spectrum it plans to sell to SpaceX

It adds up

A few € from you and from every device that now needs a connection in order to function (cars, planes, trains, cameras, laptops, personal trackers, etc)

Then there are those that need a high SLA connection (security, military, industrial equipment etc)

It very quickly adds up.

Apple's 'Awe Droppings' fall close to the tree

Batteries are very good and reliable theses days, it's not just Apple. The chemistry is well tested and understood. Problems tend to happen when you try to package them in novel ways - thinner or odd shapes.

Cybercrooks ripped the wheels off at Jaguar Land Rover. Here's how not to get taken for a ride

Jaguar was always a small, niche manufacturer. While they might not be assembling any cars at the moment, there is plenty of manufacturing and logistics needed for the existing fleet.

Atlassian's move to cloud-only means customers face integration issues and more

How else to train these AI models if not with customer data held on cloud?

UK govt dept website that campaigns against encryption hijacked to advertise ... payday loans

Aren't you also advertising this payday loan site?

Their SEO team will be very pleased

UK dumps £2.5 billion into fusion pipe dream that's already cost millions

I know the joke is that fusion energy is *always* 10 or 20 years away from becoming reality, but that shouldn't stop us.

People once thought it was crazy to go to space or Mars, to collide atoms at immense speeds, to decode the human DNA, or indeed to mess around with atomic bombs.

We should explore, research and reach out for these new scientific frontiers.

Or as a famous person once said, we should do it not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

Adobe turns subscription screw again, telling users to pay up or downgrade

Affinity by Serif

Affinity is great but it lacks some tools to reach parity with Adobe, a video editor being the biggest.

I didn't know Serif was bought by Canva, that's not great news. It would vahe been a better fit for Black Magic Design to pair Affinity with their DaVinci Resolve video editor and offer a full packade.

Daddy of a mistake by GoDaddy took Zoom offline for about 90 minutes

Plenty of big companies buy generic domains and park them at MarkMonitor just so their competition doesn't get to use them.

Is that an abusive registration (i.e. cybersquatting)? Definitely not.

Is that annoying and stifles competition? Most definitely.

Hosting the status page status.zoom.us on the same domain is wrong for instances just like theses. If the domain goes down, the status page goes down with it.

Similarly, Nominet (the .uk registry) hosts its status page on nominetstatus.uk Well guess what? If Nominet goes down, that status page goes down with it.

These status pages should be hosted on an entirely separate network and using a different TLD.

ActiveX blocked by default in Microsoft 365 because remote code execution is bad, OK?

Re: Old CCTV kit

Or use a disposable VM.

The ISO and serial numbers for old Windows versions are freely available.

The Automattic vs WP Engine WordPress wars are getting really annoying

Re: Bonkers

Man, that WP Engine hosting is ridiculously expensive!

NIST trains AI to hear the 'oh crap' moment before batteries explode

Re: "find its way into homes, office buildings, and [EV] parking garages"

Last year there was a similar fire in a multistorey car park at Luton airport. It turned out it was caused by a diesel Land Rover. So don't assume EV every time you hear of a car fire.

Statistically they are less likely to catch fire than diesel or petrol, but as the article suggests, when they do, the intensity is far greater. Some fire departments don't even try to put the fire out anymore because it is close to impossible, merely controlling the fire and preventing it from spreading.

But it is worth mentioning that modern lithium batteries have temperature sensors that can detect a thermal incident and alert the user.

UK energy watchdog slaps down Capita's £130M smart meter splurge

Re: Dear Smart Meter Zealots: Explain why they all....

Companies cannot disconnect electricity supply willy nilly

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/energy/energy-supply/problems-with-your-energy-supply/if-youve-been-told-your-energy-supply-will-be-disconnected/

Combustion engines grind Linus Torvalds' gears

Re: Google will be cheering

I see that whole advertising campaign by Apple about how they protect your privacy has worked on some people.

They all collect data on you: your phone, your car, your smart microwave, and, of course, your government.

Don't get the illusion of privacy because you picked one brand over the other. If you really want privacy, compile your own open source software and run it on your own hardware.

Apple crushes creativity and its reputation in new iPad ad

Why stop there?

Why stop at the trash can mac pro?

The subsequent non-upgradable mac pro tower is just as bad, or that monitor stand amd those wheels that cost more than a laptop. Each.

Should I mention that new VR headset? Too soon?

Affordable, self-healing power grids are closer than you think

Re: Intermittent generation

The electric grid is becoming less centralised with more and more generation (solar, bidirectional charging) happening at the edge of the grid.

There are trials of new-built homes with solar panels and included energy storage which are managed by the grid operator that are being sold with zero ongoing costs because they help balance the grid. Lookup zero bill homes from Octopus

Re: Batteries

I recently read about the Tesla grid-scale batteries doing a virtual inertia to keep frequency stable, so it can be done in other ways. It is beyond my paygrade though...

Re: 120 kWh a day

Heating / Gas only numbers.

The numbers are very clear in the smart meter history.

This includes hot water but that's only a very small part during winter months

Re: Intermittent generation

Some heat pumps are reversible and can be used to cool the property in the summer. It's not very efficient though, maybe a couple degrees C temperature reduction, because of the low convection rate with "normal" radiators. There are "active" radiators with fans on them that would improve that.

Re: 120 kWh a day

Educated guess? Hilarious!

120 kWh a day for heating a semi-detached house!?

I live in such a house and can tell you the most I ever used was 46kWh on Jan 20th. Presumably it was very cold that day because the winter average for me is well below 30kWh per day. December average was <20kWh per day but it was an unusually warm month.

Japan's NTT and NEC reckon they can boost optical network capacities 12x

Unfortunately

It sounds like this won't be deployable to existing infrastructure? Presumably the repeaters would need upgrading.

Nominet to restructure, slash jobs after losing 'major deal'

Bonuses become hard to justify then...

For example folks got $xxx,xxx bonuses each for signing the deal to acquire CyGlass which cost $x,xxx,xxx to buy and lost $xx,xxx,xxx in a few short years and was later sold for $1

Re: I don't remember learning this in economics!

The cyber business (relatively new venture) has been making massive losses every year. They're complaining about tougher competition in this space and not being able to compete on price.

The registry business (.uk) has always been highly profitable due to it being a natural monopoly. They want to increase prices for the registry to make up for higher losses in the cyber.

I say cut the losses and stop messing about with these bright new venture ideas that each CEO and Board come up with every few years.

Raspberry Pi on IPO plans: 'We want to be ready when the markets are ready'

Re: Not for profit

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK company limited by *guarantee* and a *charity* registered in England and Wales with number 1129409

The Raspberry Pi LTD (Company number 08207441) is a private company limited by *shares* with the main shareholder (>75%) being The Raspberry Pi Foundation

This info is publicly available in the Companies House registry

Re: And what could possibly go wrong

An IPO would raise capital for further investment and potentially diversification of the product lineup.

Though I would be inclined to think that, considering how loyal and supportive the RPi user base is, similar capital could be raised through some form of crowdfunding.

I know I would pitch in or prepay for the RPi6 a year or two before its launch in order to support its development.

ICANN proposes creating .INTERNAL domain to do the same job as 192.168.x.x

.internal

.LAN sounds better to me and describes more accurately what the resource is

White goods giant fires legal threats to unplug open source plugin

Re: Some people...

Of course this type of tariff is not for everyone, but it is a sign if things to come. That's the reason behind smart meters rollout.

I was already an Octopus customer for some time and they have the option to compare all your smart meter usage data that you have with them against the historical Agile prices and get an estimate of what you would have paid for that period if you were on the Agile tariff. In my case, it came out 30% cheaper, mostly because I'm almost never at home during peak hours.

| Why is there a penalty at the peak period?

That's when there is the highest demand on the grid. All those people getting home from work and putting on the kettle or turning on the oven. To support this extra load, the National Grid usually resorts to expensive gas peaker plants.

| Why is there a 100p cap?

Presumably to give some reassurance to customers. It's better to do this benevolently, rather than have Ofgem write special rules for your unique tariff.

| How well does Agile reflect renewable supply?

Very closely, but there are some surprises. For example I sometimes get free energy when there are strong winds (like the other day with storm Isha) but during those times the national Agile tariff can still be quite expensive.

As far as I can tell that is because of the location of renewable generation and the lack of transmission lines capacity to shift that surplus to where it's needed. So, because I have solar and wind farms nearby, I'm incentivised to use as much energy as possible rather than them having to shut down generators and pay them penalties (curtailment).

It's an interestingly complex topic and I've only just started digging... :)

Re: Some people...

Fair point. A wash cycle should cost way less than £1

I did my units wrong and confused W with kWh

But the point remains: the difference in price of the Agile tariff between the cheapest and the most expensive time of the day can be 3-10x

Occasionally the price can even turn negative, so you get paid to use electricity

Re: Some people...

That's similar, yet entirely different.

Look up Octopus Agile:

https://agile.octopushome.net/dashboard

Re: Service with a smile

You don't need a "smart" appliance for this. Most will return some kind of error code which the owner can relay to the customer service or engineer.

I had an incident like this...

The engineer came over knowing exactly what the problem was, based on the error number and my description of the symptoms. However, due to their internal processes he couldn't preorder the needed parts. So he had to come over to confirm what the problem was, then book another visit a week later to come back with the replacement parts.

That might have been a Samsung "smart" washer, but it was a dump process...

One guy gets it...

Some people...

Some people love to hate anything that is turned "smart", especially white goods, but fail to see the actual reasons and benefits of doing this.

With the smart meter rollout, we are gradually shifting towards time of use tariffs for electricity and this will mean we will load our washer or dishwasher, press a button and it will run the wash cycle whenever the energy is cheapest or the grid has extra capacity. I occasionally get 2-3 hours slots of free electricity from Octopus and the remote start function is perfect for that. But I also have their Agile tariff (every half hour has a different cost per kWh) and an automation on my Home Assistant turns the wash program on when a certain number of consecutive hours of cheap electricity begon ,usually around 1-4am. Of course, the washer needs to be loaded by me first and I must enable remote start and leave it pending.

Of course these appliances don't need internet to achieve this, just some sort of API, ideally completely local. Until now every manufacturer did their own thing, their own integrations and partnerships with smart meter companies, etc. But finally it looks like there might be a common standard on the horizon: the Home Connectivity Alliance.

The "smart" functionality for these appliances can be a very basic chip like an ESP32 which in turn activates a relay and confirms the operation and state, so it needs not to be expensive. It can recover its cost quite easily. For example, I did some rough calculations and the "smart" remote control/start on my dishwasher can save up to £2 per wash if it runs when the electricity is the cheapest compared to when it is most expensive during a typical day.

Apply the same logic and functionality to something like a heat pump and the savings really add up.

YouTube video lag wrongly blamed on its ad-blocking animus

Ads are not the problem

The problem is the tracking, profiling and the invasion of privacy.

I recommend AdGuard Home, which blocks any trackers or dodgy ads providers at the DNS level.

Sorry Pat, but it's looking like Arm PCs are inevitable

Users like the feel of a real keyboard

– Blackberry

If you like to play along with the illusion of privacy, smart devices are a dumb idea

Re: please forgive my lack of knowledge...

Most data will be SSL encrypted, so it won't be a trivial thing to do.

Use a Zigbee or other wireless switch an place it right next to the door. Batteries for that last at least a couple of years.

Save your phone battery.

Use a Bluetooth iBeacon.

Your Home Assistant will know you're home just before you step through the door and turn the front door light for you if appropriate.

This is one of the great things about Home Assistant is that you can achieve the same outcome in so many different ways with so many different type of sensors.

Yeah, but...

I love Home Assistant, but while itself is very privacy-focussed, it is often relying on 3rd party integrations that have their own loose privacy policies.

So my HA for example talks to the Google Nest and Bosch/Miele API which have been mentioned in this article.

UK government hands CityFibre £318M for rural broadband builds

Re: That's a lot of money

Well, yes. But that's the cost of install for a single dwelling.

The transport of equipment onsite, the planning and council permission, some of the trenches and ducts, all of that would be shared by a larger number of homes and would expect to bring the cost down significantly.

If I call BT to dig up my street to install fibre just for me, then yes, I expect that to be quite expensive.

That's a lot of money

Almost £2,000 per household to get fibre broadband?

Post-Brexit tariffs on cross EU-UK electrical vehicle imports still going ahead

Re: Fuck business

Vote Leave to free the UK from all the EU regulations, they said... well, whether you like it or not, we're still affected by EU regulations directly or indirectly.

First pushback against EU's Digital Services Act and it's not Google

Re: who is and who isn't a VLOP

Also chat apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessages.

Or platforms like Netflix and Spotify.

These surely have >45m users in EU

Who!?

No, really... Who?

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

I think it was for privacy. I remember there were reports in the news or maybe just urban myths that a 2G phone could be remotely turned into a listening device and this caused a lot of people to be concerned when discussing sensitive topics. The safest thing was to remove the battery

They are tools

Exactly! Your analogy to a hammer is very pertinent.

Once you start looking at things you use every day (phone, laptop, car) as tools, your whole attitude to buying them and using them changes.

I'm not convinced this legislation goes far enough, but user-swappable batteries in smartphones, similar to the ones we had in the 2G era, might actually result in smaller phone dimensions if you could have a fully charged battery in your glove box or your laptop bag which you could swap in seconds.

Because your ignorance has an impact on all of us and our environment.

It is not worse. You don't see anyone complaining that remote controls use AA batteries, or that all TVs have this HDMI port, or that all cars must be Euro6, etc.