* Posts by Lon24

454 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jul 2020

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Raspberry Pi OS 5.2 is here, with pleasant tweaks to Wayland-based desktop

Lon24

Re: 800MB

20MB? The first generation of HDD PCs was 5MB - absolutely massive and fast alongside the 5.25 floppy. It seemed to be sometime before 10MB and 20MB disks cut in. Later when I started my own company - my first big deal was selling 200 x 150MB disks to a computer company. I've got my price list from that era filed away somewhere ... eye watering these days.

Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble

Lon24

Re: Just a thought

But does he have the dosh to rent a dish?

Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS

Lon24

Brexit Bonus?

I presume the UK users may be relieved of the burden of having to choose a browser and allow Apple to take back control? What if I procure my kit from Northern Ireland? Will that kit be EU compliant and, of course, not subject to any Irish Sea customs malarkey?

Can AI shorten PC replacement cycles? Dell seems to think so

Lon24

The only incentive, for me, to buy a replacement PC is the death of the current one. Thinkpads, at least old Thinkpads are extremely death resistant. Currently a X270 and a venerable T530. The T530 dual boots Linux and Win11 (yes Win11) off separate SSDs. One replaceable with two external screws (no spudging required). The other is in a DVD caddy tray which just slides out. The I7 still gives me the performance I need so its future replacement will be a, relatively, costly downgrade in convenience and flexibility.

Lon24

Re: Where's the incentive?

Dunno. I remember showing off 'Eliza' as human like responder. But soon the repetition of answers and the basic BASIC format made it boring. Imagine an animated character you could really chat too - and (for an additional fee) do other things with .... sex always sells. You might want that to stay on your laptop than the cloud ;-)

Good news is there would be less time for social media death scrolling. Goodbye Zuck & Elon.

Trump, who tried kicking TikTok out of the US, says boo to latest ban effort

Lon24

Sympathy for the Devil

What can one say about someone who caused me to experience a nanogram of sympathy for Zuck? Fortunately it passed quickly.

I remember when the US Government flagrantly used its disproportionate power to support American Industry. A policy which made them, by far, the richest nation on earth. Now American Industry knows any upset with Trump could decimate their company. Of course giving money to the Democrats to protect themselves will upset Trump. If the GOP can come for Disney they will come for anyone. The management of many organisations face an existential dilemma. Only fossil fuel companies may feel safe.

Watchdog calls for more plugs, less monopoly in EV charging network

Lon24

Re: Meh... Either way

Slicing through an active 50kW (or even 7kW) cable may be the last slice you do. Petrol pump hoses may be safer for non-smokers ;-)

Type 2 are locked safely in the boot when not active. And in 5 years fast charging and seeing many dead chargers I've never seen one without a cable.

Lon24

Re: It is still not as simple as pulling up in a forecourt and filling up a tank

Yes - you can buy petrol anywhere, any brand with the same debit/credit card. Actually most fast chargers on the main roads now support debit/credit cards. RFID cards & apps will soon be a museum piece except possibly for local 7kW charging.

CCS is a problem for us pioneers with Chademo. Cars last a long time and Chademo cars are still sold in the UK so mandating their support for the foreseeable future is necessary. Though I can't see Elon (who castigated the EU over CCS) providing it on his superchargers.

Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk's mega pay package

Lon24

Re: re: The first thing we do

Why waste the bullets? I'm sure Elon has a spare SpaceX rocket or three. We just need to pitch in and buy him the Douglas Adams books to inspire him. But please spare the telephone sanitisers.

Lenovo to offer certified refurbished PCs and servers

Lon24

Us too - Thinkpad fans. We use a trusted UK refurbisher who get their stocks from business end of lease or similar. If Lenovo are entering the market with higher overheads they may squeeze supply to traditional refurbishers and then resell at higher prices.

i don't think it good news for thrifty UK buyers.

FAA gives Boeing 90 days to fix serious safety shortcomings found in report

Lon24

The Golden Years

1958-70 Boeing 707/727/737/747.

Each one a game changer. Who would have thought 57 years after the 737 introduction they are screwing up big time on the programme in so many ways. The golden generation of designers would surely have got a new design into production before Airbus matched and then overtook the late to the show mangled Max derivative. To keep Boeing's place as the premier planemaker.

Boeing are being taken to the cleaners by SpaceX too. So it is not the problem of a particular programme but of management and the culture they created (or destroyed?). An appalling fall from grace. Let's hope the old Boeing can break through and make the US justly proud of such a strategic company and industry once again.

Intuitive Machines' Odysseus prepares for Moon landing

Lon24

Re: Success?

The EagleCam which was supposed to be ejected to take pictures of the landing seems to have gone MIA. I wonder if that mighty solar flare helped to disrupt comms and possibly other instruments. Moon landings are tricky when you don't have an Armstrong at the wheel.

Worried about the impending demise of Windows 10? Google wants you to give ChromeOS Flex a try

Lon24

Gluts can be good

"Viswanatha was quick to point out that hundreds of millions of Windows 10 devices are destined for landfills if Microsoft has its way"

A little overstated methinks. Who these days would bin a good working Windows 10 PC when you can always get a few bob on eBay even if it is sans disk? An opportunity for many (and we are talking millions) of Linux users to refresh their stock. A glut will depress prices which is good if you are on the receiving end. So ChromeOS if you want to keep your fingers clean or a full distro if you fancy yourself as a power user,

Almost mouthwatering - unless you or your IT department are addicted to Windows.

Twilio reminds users that Authy Desktop apps die next month – not in August

Lon24

Found a silver lining

Always an upside. The alternatives suggested included Keepassxc which I have used for years as my password manager. Setting up to 2FA always featured Authy or Google Authenticator and I have both on various devices. I hadn't realised that Kepassxc had 2FA support (and its difficult to find without a tutorial). Then simple to setup and, of course, works on all devices accessing the same database.

So moving from one password manager and 2FA apps to just one combined. Result! Thank you Twilo for the fish and a reason to avoid your products in future too.

Work to resolve binary babble from Voyager 1 is ongoing

Lon24

Yep,the latency might be pretty poor but it is almost light years ahead of my bank's communication response. They are only two hundred earth miles distant.

Ford pulls the plug on EV strategy as losses pile up

Lon24

Re: Once upon a time....

Confused here. If you regularly travel 200 miles then you get an EV with a range of more than 200 miles. If, like me that happens maybe once a year then its really not a problem. Mine only does ~ 160 miles. Mind you as an ex-cyclist I know how to get 200 by draughting a high lorry on the motorway. Royal Mail ones almost pull you along!

Ok, if its 400 miles miles non-stop a PHEV may be the better buy right now. Just worries me that people aren't prepared to take a 45 minute or less break half way. Again there is a choice of fast/ultrafast charging rates depending on your model choice. Some drivers may think they can hold their concentration, hunger and bladder for 3-7 hours but they haven't convinced me.

You're not imagining things – USB memory sticks are getting worse

Lon24

Size isn't everything

How big was your stick? most old ones were probably 8/16 or even 32GB. Since then we have found many alternatives to storing larger lumps of data. But if you just need to boot a computer or transfer some files then you may not need more today. But try and get a 8/16GB stick or SD card these days and even if you are lucky you won't find it cheaper than 32/64GB.

Paying for capacity you won't use which makes what you do use less reliable is not progress.

IPv4 address rentals to mint millions of dollars for AWS

Lon24

Stuffed Turkey

I could almost live in a pure IPv6 world - indeed most of my traffic is IPv6. Except there are standouts (looking at you a certain mobile phone provider) who can't provide a universal IPv6 service. Also one of my software providers requires an IPv4 connect to activate.

Until the last IPv4 service is terminated it compels so many others to provide an IPv4 service. Reverse chicken & egg <:-(

Zen Internet warns customers of an impending IP address change

Lon24

Re: Residential

Didn't know Zen did dynamic The choice back in the noughties was 1 or 8 static. At the time I elected for 8 because it was a bigger number. Now, that choice is a vital part of our infrastructure. Pretty much locks me into Zen as long as I can hang onto my /29

Lon24

That's a part of the delegated 82.68.0.0/14 range to Zen. I think that 262144 address range served Zen for many early years and as others have said other subnets were probably bought in later. So I'm guessing early customers may not be affected.

At least that's my hope!

Lon24

Re: Anyone using the IP for a self-hosted mail server" should just stop

I sympathise with your sentiments BUT and it is a big BUT - some other mailserver hosts blanket ban 'domestic' IP ranges. It's OK if its primary purpose is part of an internal system but public server?

Just depends on what the rest of the world sees your IP as.

Lon24

Could it be FFTP? I've also not heard and am on FTTC with a /29. Or maybe your range - I'm on 82.x.x.x

That runaway datacenter power grab is the best news for net zero this century

Lon24

Re: A fine idea but...

Those 5 to 10 days would be predictable from a week or so in advance and pretty precise demand 72 hours out with current met forecasts. Anticyclones and cloud don't just appear out of the blue. Given our dash for gas we could have a large legacy fleet to call on without having to build more plant. If only we could fire them with green hydrogen created when we have excess wind and solar to spare.

Elon Musk's brain-computer interface outfit Neuralink tests its tech on a human

Lon24

Re: The silicon chip inside her head, gets switched to overload

Right I agree with you. But if you have a damaged mind that can't control vital functions - could this possibly be able to help?

Forget Elon: his hype, dates and functional claims have an unfortunate history. But listen to independent practitioners who may be in a better position than you or I to judge whether this is just vapourware or a potential lifechanger. Success despite Elon is a possibility.

United Airlines’ patience with Boeing is maxed out after repeated safety issues

Lon24

Given the manufacturing cost may not be significantly different and only a part of the lifetime operating cost - that suggests the margin - which will mostly go to R&D - doesn't bode well for Boeing to compete with the next generation airframes.

Outsourcing to Spirit may have been a good short term cost saving but has the full ongoing consequences been factored into the business plan?

Lon24

Always a risk to betting against the speed of Chinese engineering and technology development. Granted the Chinese are probably still learning hard to create an infallible quality/safety culture and innovation in their aerospace sector. Boeing had it - and lost it after the McD takeover. So given the choice of flying on a B737 Max, A321 or COMAC C919 - I think competition for last place is getting tighter.

Lon24

United have already taken delivery of the first 3 of 130 A321 Neo - besides having a large existing fleet of other A32x models. Hence converting some Max 10 orders to A321 Neo is just a question of juggling delivery dates - and possibly Boeing contract penalties.

COMAC might make a difference in taking orders from Asian & African airlines that would have gone to Airbus so reducing future backlog. At this stage I can't imagine any major US or European airline take the political risk of buying Chinese. But if they can make a success of the 919 which is a catch-up 737/320 design then the next generation may be a more compelling option. It took Airbus many, many years to break into the US Boeing/Douglas/Lockheed dominated market. I doubt the Chinese could do it faster.

Boeing goes boing: 757 loses a wheel while taxiing down the runway

Lon24

Re: click bait

Agree - it left Boeing's assembly shop over 30 years ago together with hundreds of others. The default assumption is it is either a wrongly fitted tyre or a tyre fault. With around half the world's jet manufactured fleet and with random incidents happening daily (according to the wonderful Aviation Herald) it's unsurprising that a Boeing jetliner will be involved quite often. Thankfully very few reflect any issue with Boeing itself - even if it should be zero.

I'm usually quite critical of the post-McD management but we must give them and their predecessors a free pass on this unless an investigative authority turns up something unexpected.

In other news several Fords was involved in a collisions today including loss of life ... and even more needed tyre repairs.

At last: The BBC Micro you always wanted, in Mastodon form

Lon24

And Finally

Dear Reg - When we see these reports on a Mastodon/Fediverse Reg/Vulture instance?

Just get a spare RaspberryPi out of your drawer and stick it under the desk quietly. No need to tell IT ;-)

Researchers confirm what we already knew: Google results really are getting worse

Lon24

The Singer not the Song

What's more annoying is actually using Google (via Startpage).

Put in search terms. Then scroll past the ads. Which leaves fast decreasing space for actual results. Not interested in the order - but the link domain. If it's an IT problem then we all have a number of sites we trust. OK I'm probably going to page 3 before I have sufficient choice.

Really annoying for us who remember early Google where the top result was nearly always the best answer.

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

Lon24

Re: Compensation?

Listen to the BBC Raidio 4 episode broadcast today at 10:45 on BBC Sounds. It covers the testimony of a Fujitsu employee in court and her "Afterthoughts" report she made to her managements regretting her role. What happened next? No spoiler here, you will have to listen. BTW the whole series is worth listening to to get a deeper grip of what happened, why and what are the main outstanding questions.

I also listened to the two guys testifying yesterday. They both shared the same problem of inheriting a disaster and taking questions relying on what they had unearthed in their organisations. One was not a politician and did answer some questions. He had done his homework. The other was just a waste of space. Four years and not knowing even the basic timeline. Or did the dog eat his homework?

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

Lon24

Re: Norway

"I remember the Gulf Stream" - MetOffice weather forecaster (2050).

"Meanwhile tonight the Solent may freeze so you can walk across." In other news Red Funnel goes into administration ;-)

YouTube video lag wrongly blamed on its ad-blocking animus

Lon24

Re: I can smell something... smells a lot like bullshit

Depends on how you define force feed.

My TV has a YouTube app. A few clicks on the remote and I get videos and ads. I assume Google may pay the TV manufacturer for their place in the list. Whereas if I want to watch a non-ad, non-algorithm free video service - I can't. Well yes I could go upstairs and watch it on my desktop with much smaller screen or laptop with its tinny speaker.

Theoretically I could use the TV web browser. But have you tried? It's designed to be be a non-functioning feature for all but the most masochistic. The bottom line is these companies don't force you - but tilt the playing field so sharply that no matter where you want to kick the ball its ends up monetised in their net.

And creators have to go where the viewers are. And the viewers go to where the creators are - whether the creator is commercial or doing it for free.

The New ROM Antics – building the ZX Spectrum 128

Lon24

Re: Paper Tigers

You are so right. I was a business planner at ICL and was given the use of a 1901A to run the modelling. Except as I recall the only software available was PROSPER and there wasn't even a FORTRAN compiler available. My enlightened boss allowed me to fiddle my expenses to acquire a surreptitious TRS-80. Knocking stuff up on BASIC was trivial and I was knocking out results to go senior management. I can't take that to the board said my manager. 80pp matrix wasn't ICL and use of alien kit was forboden.

So lashed up a Termiprinter with a fancy bit of cabling. Results on standard 132pp green/white lined paper. RESULT! I got a commendation for getting their modellng software to work so well - and so FAST!

The Termiprinter cost rather more than the Trash-80 & Matrix printer combined but no one but me and my boss were any the wiser.

Cutting-edge microscopy reveals bottled water has 'up to 100 times' more bits of plastic than previously feared

Lon24

Re: Mount Inaccessible

I wouldn't be surprised if they found microplastics on the top of Mount Everest nowadays. Something Hillary & Tensing didn't have to worry about.

X reverses course on headlines in article links, kinda

Lon24

Re: Things Twitter/X is equivalent to in value

I run a couple of local news services. Twitter was, as you say, the major source. But in the last few months it has cratered. Some major contributors have simply stopped without explanation - letting their profiles to rot. Others have dramatically reduced their postings. What has replaced them on my standard searches is white supremacists, misogynists and other assorted hatemongers. Same with my 'for you' and recommended followers. Does their algorithm really think those are a fit for me? OK I don't post so I guess that's the default (plus Elon's words of wisdom of course).

Problem is other new sources also relied on Twitter so they are drying up as well. Bottom line is local news is dying and Elon has to take responsibility for it. But obviously it's of no interest so why should he care? With the demise of the traditional local forums eclipsed by Twitter et al we are now left with little reliable community news.

If only we could get local organisations to post more on their website news section we could pick up the rss feeds and aggregate a decent service again.

Europe classifies three adult sites as worthy of its toughest internet regulations

Lon24

Re: So, a few porn sites are now VLOPs

Yep, they might be nicer places if restricted to under-16s. Although a certain proprietor might be a wee bit miffed. Except what age is a man-child?

Raspberry Pi sizes up HAT+ spec for future hardware add-ons

Lon24

So big I'm trying to work out where the fan goes.

Polish train maker denies claims its software bricked rolling stock maintained by competitor

Lon24

Re: Hackers entering GPS coordinates of OEM repair shops to prevent trains from failing?

True. But if you were the errant CEO caught on cctv with his knickers down - what better excuse could you invent? I'm struggling to find a better one ... as I'm sure their PR/creative team did until the dog eat it.

Scribbling limits in free version of Evernote set to test users' patience

Lon24

Re: $130 per year?

I plead guilty to spreading free Evernote to my clients and acquaintances of old. Then several years ago as they began to get restrictive - I moved to Simplenote. But then as my needs exceeded its functionality and I had a server I used DokuWiki as a dump for all that miscellaneous stuff one accumulates - howtos, changelogs, scans of documents etc. Now that info is available anywhere on any device. Never looked back.

Thank you Evernote for starting me off digitising my notes and forcing me to sort it properly. Now I regard freemium products/services as tactical solutions not to get hooked on. Only genuine open source software is unlikely to extract money with menaces. A pity that. 20 years ago I paid for most of my software giving authors reward for their code. But one by one they sold out to corporations that saw their objective as screwing the customers base rather than delivering better value for money.

Electric vehicles earn shocking report card for reliability

Lon24

Redmond Law

Hey - this is an IT forum and are we forgetting Microsoft? Version 1 of any product is best regarded as an alpha release, version 2 is a beta and version 3 is actually usable.

Most EVs available have yet to get to version 3 when the most obvious bugs have been fixed. EVs are best regarded as 4 wheel computers. I rest my Excel :-)

Meta sued by privacy group over pay up or click OK model

Lon24

At least in that day a 1p stamp would get your missive delivered anywhere in the UK next day thanks to those nouveau steam engines - maybe the same day if you lived anywhere civilised ;-)

Whereas today the wrong side of a quid might get a letter delivered sometime/ That's if you can find a biro that actually works. But what's wrong with this new fangled emaily thing? You really need to get into the twentieth century before it's too late!

Author hopes to throw the book at OpenAI, Microsoft with copyright class action

Lon24

Re: So what about all the students reading books to write papers?

Yes, basically adding value by integrating it with other information or applying the knowledge gained to a new situation. Even so it is both courteous and maybe a legal obligation if the input to added value is substantial to give, at least, a citation.

Something I am unaware these bots are designed to do or even if an LLM has the concept of being able to identify any relevant single input related to output. Just a collection of very sophisticated word correlations that are effectively independent of any one work but totally dependent on ALL our work.

Bezos might beat Musk to Mars as NASA recruits Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket

Lon24

Back to square 1. Do not pass Go. Do not collect ...

"Engineers overhauled the rocket's initial design, changing its boosters and engines,"

Errm, isn't that basically the rocket?

Want a Cybertruck? You're stuck with it for a year, says Tesla

Lon24

Re: This Even Legal

Except like all Teslas it is a computer on wheels. The computer runs software and without that the vehicle won't run. Hence won't you be subject to any software licensing rules? Goodness me even IBM/RH are restricting the passing on of open source stuff. Tesla don't even have to sue - they can just disable your vehicle in the garage with an OTA update. Job done you naughty boy.

Musk's broadband satellite kingdom Starlink now cash flow positive – or so he claims

Lon24

Re: Cash flow positive

Choose any period when they don't pay for a launch a rocket or take delivery of a satellite but do bill some customers then it is a cash positive period. What has gone before or yet to come doesn't affect that. It has nothing to do with profitability or asset value. We are nearly all cash positive on pay day no matter whether rich or in spiralling debt.

India's lunar landing made a mess on the Moon

Lon24

Yep, the next folks to be sent to the moon should be the sanitisers to clean up methinks

Where do people feel most at risk of being pwned? The pub

Lon24

Re: For those times when there's no mobile signal...

Make sure it is a truly random collection of letter and numbers. One of my GMail accounts has been accidentally been used twice by different people. My address is a is a straight string. The other two used the same string but with the two random digits Google appends to avoid duplicates. Either they or the online company managed to forget the digits. Why online companies selling stuff don't do a simple email verification beats me.

Two banks decided (after many years of use) to declare another email address as invalid because it isn't a personal address 'for security reasons'. It isn't a personal address for the very reason that should it fall into miscreant hands they can't infer my name. That's security. Neither bank bothered to inform me that my valid address was now invalid until I tried to get into the account and stopped receiving emails. Perhaps they had but their stupid system wouldn't send it. Doh!

Ask a builder to fix a server and out come the vastly inappropriate power tools

Lon24

Re: Shocking!

Some of us are more magnetic than others enhanced by our choice of apparel ;-)

King Charles III signs off on UK Online Safety Act, with unenforceable spying clause

Lon24

Re: Safe

The politicos may have not noticed that serious criminals are serious about their IT. Without budget constraints and clever devious minds will they outwit this blunderbuss of a law? Thinking imported mobiles, sideloaded apks and VPNs

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