Posts by Will Godfrey

Asus' latest single-board computer packs a 12-core, 4.5Ghz Intel i7

Re: In English, please...

FFS, come on - this was a British publication...

FTFY

Would prefer something in the middle

Say 2-3GHz, with some sensibly arranged I/O sockets fitted, and at a price where you don't have to sell all your toys.

Boss installed software from behind the Iron Curtain, techies ended up Putin things back together

Hmmm

A suspicious amount of beer-ding going on here.

Equinix to cut costs by cranking up the heat in its datacenters

Run the whole site at mains voltage DC

While HVDC has issues, they are manageable.

All modern PSUs will run off 240 V DC, and will actually do so more efficiently, so no changes needed in the racks (unless they are using AC fans). The UPS(es) can also be of a type that has a 240V battery stack - they do exist. I've worked on them. Apart from charge balancing circuitry they are actually much simpler than conventional ones, and again more efficient.

The initial cost would be greater, but would be quickly offset by improved performance.

P.S. In the ones I saw, there was no power wasting inverter. Also, the AC mains input to the UPS was harmonically 3rd tuned to flatten the waveform and give the rectifiers an easier time.

Victims of IT scandal in UK postal service will get fresh compensation

Been covered by the above commentards

But still makes me bloody angry.

KmsdBot botnet is down after operator sends typo in command

Coudn't happen to 'nicer' peole

BWAAAAAA ha ha HA

Rights groups threaten legal action over NHS data pilot based on Palantir tech

No Surprise

Successive governments have sold of just about anything of value, so the barons are now scratching around for anything else they can make money out of. The NHS has been a prime target in various ways for some time. The only thing that's different is that these days thay hardly bother to make any effort to disguise the fact.

Programming error created billion-dollar mistake that made the coder ... a hero?

Re: Worst code I ever saw...

Used sparingly, even the occasional "Here be dragons" is useful - it alerts the reader to the fact the function is both complicated and temperamental!

(interrupt handlers anyone!)

'Russian missiles can't destroy the cloud': Ukraine leader describes emergency migration

Why Now?

They apparently started to put this together nearly a year ago, and it seems it's been pretty complete for a long time. I'm guessing that AWS has already been under attack from Russian supported crims, so there's no point in keeping quiet about it now.

Elon Musk picks fight with Apple for slashing advertising spend on Twitter

Re: YAMM - yet another Muskamania Mutter

Please don't use the term "Spawn". Even toads will feel insulted.

Fresh versions of Ubuntu Touch, Mir display server, and Unity arrive

Re: Not coming here

I'm well aware of the issues with SystemD, which I why I migrated all my machines to devuan.

I've no particular concerns about snap itself, more the way ubuntu is quietly installing it on otherwise normal upgrades, and transferring things like browsers across to snap packages. The average user would know nothing about this, and have no idea what to do if they were aware of it happening.

As has been said before this is a security risk. You have no control over exactly what is being installed. You can't inspect it or change the contents.

Removing snap (if you know how to do it) presents further problems in that ubuntu no longer offers some packages other than as snaps, and the average user is not going to know how to add other repositories (or even that they exist), and certainly would have no hope of compiling stuff. Come to think of it I wouldn't like to try compiling firefox!

Not coming here

As far as I'm concerned, since the introduction and forcing of snap, anything connected with ubuntu is "Here Be Dragons" country.

Sandworm gang launches Monster ransomware attacks on Ukraine

Re: Illegal attack

It does seem an odd phrase. I can't think of any kind of attack that can be considered legal. Even if it was in some way provoked, it's still a wrong thing. Similarly I can't see that defense against an attack could be illegal.

Man wins court case against employer that fired him for not liking boozy, forced 'fun' culture

Ugh!

I consider myself fortunate in never having come across that sort of company, although I know they exist.

US chip war could hurt the West as Beijing moves to ramp up its own industry

Surprised?

Pretty much what some of us have been saying for some considerable time.

Epson zaps lasers into oblivion, in the name of the environment

Follow the money

I bought a colour laserjet about 5 years ago. I've used it for colour posters and flyers as well as ordinary letters. It still has the original cartridges.

Linus Torvalds to be 'more hard-nosed' as Linux 6.2 merge window meets Christmas

Good to see

Firm but fair, and with a sense of humour - the best sort of boss

Singapore branches out onto internet of trees

Fascinating

In fact quite a tree-mend-us setup.

OK, OK, don't push.

Doctors call for greater scrutiny of bidders for platform that pools UK's health info

Two week old fish

That's what this smells like.

Study suggests AI cruise control could kill traffic jams by cutting out the 'intuition' factor

I try to drive far enough from the car in front that when they brake, I can just coast and use up some of my 'buffer'. Sometimes the driver behind will get impatient and zip round me as soon as there's a gap in lane 3 but they don't get very far ahead, but the again there are times when a whole line of us end up at a nice steady pace. Zero stress, and significantly boosts your MPG.

Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech

Re: Blind person's perspective

Thank you for that. I know one or two blind people, one of who works entirely by braille - she's damn fast and accurate!

I also knew a guy with a severe speech impediment (gone now sadly) so this would have been useless for him too.

European Parliament Putin things back together after cyber attack

Re: a sophisticated cyberattack

Well it smelled a bit, so maybe it was ping-pong

AI giant Baidu shrugs off US chip export restrictions as having 'little impact'

No Surprise

Did no-one in American officialdom notice that intelligent people have an ability to work round problems?

Waiting for speedy broadband? UK's Openreach prioritizing existing work over fiber expansion

Re: Costing to fix the copper

As has been mentioned before American is not actually 'International', but in fact a minority dialect.

Re: They had a nifty machine ..

And me.

We don't need another American tech mag. There are already several of them.

JWST snaps first chemical profile of an exoplanet atmosphere

Great stuff

JWST really is the gift that keeps on giving!

Locked out of Horizon Europe, UK commits half a billion to post-Brexit research

Re: Dollars? Euros? News?

I can remember in the 1960s it averaged 2 dollars to the pound.

Re: Yeah but....

You were being nice to him then.

Re: "the UK remains open to association"

I think you'll find the vast majority of commentards here did NOT vote for leaving the EU.

The brexit gift

... the one that continues to rob the country, and marginalise us.

Chinese Loongson chips coming in 2023, on par with 2020 x86 kit

Worth watching - as usual

Equivalent to a few years old now, but how quickly will they build on that?

America is doing an excellent job of pushing China to become not only fully independent, but also a serious competitor.

UK's National Health Service will roll existing Palantir work into patient data platform

Quality of service

Treatment for us proles will drop through the floor, while the entitled ones will get all the benfits.

EU reaches agreement on satellite comms project: Opens Iris

How's ours getting on?

Weren't we supposed to have our very own all British setup in place (or at least in development) by now?

AMD’s latest, greatest Radeon graphics card $600 cheaper than Nvidia’s top RTX 4090

Re: 68 Billion Colours ?

You definitely earned one of these ->

Nvidia faces lawsuit for melting RTX 4090 cables as AMD has a laugh

Could be worse

I'm waiting for the first report of a fire started by a faulty USB-C connector running at the max rating of 5A / 20V

Qualcomm faces fresh competition in world of Arm-based Windows PCs

I think it's Broadcom that currently employs the original designer of ARM

UK forces Chinese-owned company to offload Newport Wafer Fab

Gubbermints

While I expect we'll never get the whole story, I am (sort of) impressed by our mob.

They seem to have honed their ability to screw up everything they touch to near perfection!

Just follow the instructions … no wait, not that instruction to lock everyone out of everything

Better than being left behind

NSA urges orgs to use memory-safe programming languages

Maybe I'm missing something

But how does memory safety reduce phishing attacks, DDOS or plain old hard-coded passwords?

Can we get our priorities right?

GitHub's Copilot flies into its first open source copyright lawsuit

Getting off github

Would this actually do any good? It seems they would still have a copy of your code, so could continue to scrape what they like.

BOFH: Don't be nervous, Mr Consultant. Come right this way …

And even the sun is shining

Looks like a great start to the day.

OK, so I'm late getting up, but BOFH at breakfast is always a good way to start the day.

Australia blames Russia for harboring health insurance hackers

Victim Blaming?

Yes maybe their security was lax - I don't know, I'm not an expert on such things, but the above comments come over very much like "She was asking for it, wearing such a short skirt.". At least medibank did the right thing by refusing to pay. If more organisations had the sense to do that the problem wouldn't exist.

EU set to sign internet satellite deal, as UK frees up spectrum

If only...

we were a major player in some sort of union of countries, we could be part of, and reap the benefits of all this.

Strong support for Snap and Ubuntu Core as Canonical meet IRL

NO

As mentioned previously, ubuntu's implementation is a security nightmare.

Swiss drone-busting eagle squadron grounded permanently

Re: Headline creativity

... but not European hotels.

Re: fish eagles

Oh yes it will...

Heavy, man: Tuxedo puts out 2.2kg Stellaris AMD Gen 4

Interesting

I been thinking about a new laptop for a while, and this looks very attractive... except for the price. I don't actually need a laptop at all, and sadly can't justify this amount - unless I switch the heating off, and significantly reduce socialising :(

Sizewell C nuclear plant up for review as UK faces financial black hole

Re: Daft

If that's true, how come one of my best friends was welding pipes (from the inside) for gas transport in the 1970s?

Beer, because it was hot, dirty and dangerous work.

Version 252 of systemd, as expected, locks down the Linux boot process

About time I made a donation to the Devuan team.

Thanks for the reminder.

That's all.

Windows 11 runs on fewer than 1 in 6 PCs

Re: Plain Annoying

Don't you and the wife get on then?