* Posts by PRR

554 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Mar 2021

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The last mile's at risk in our hostile environment. Let’s go the extra mile to fix it

PRR Bronze badge

Re: "Stop putting cabling in easy to reach, easy to breach ducting"

> you could bill SFR for rent.

In the very earliest days of home dial-up, we did just that. ISPs offered local phone numbers. This was actually all re-directed at a regional switch, but the protocol implied they needed a local Point Of Presence to have a local number. Somehow one ISP got our address, offered a monthly rent to put lines on our house. I never knew if they meant to cross-circuit or if it was all tariff-foolery.

But no actual panel or wires ever appeared. They had proposed a yearly contract, and this went on for three and a half years, when they notified us they would end the contract. (Probably about the time everybody was getting AOL diskettes every month.) I pointed to the clause in their words that the deal would go year to year, and they were on the hook for several more months.

Youse guys bury cables?? My TV cable is laid shallower than weed-roots. The POTS line not much deeper. My neighbor's TV cable went out mid-winter (frost-heave can be severe here). The company just laid an orange cable on top of the snow and said they would be back in spring. That was 7 years ago. Even my power lines are not in conduit.

UK minister tells telcos to share telegraph poles if they can't lay cable underground

PRR Bronze badge

Re: They do.

> The obvious and fair solution

Maybe where you are. This problem is OLD in the USA. (Los Angeles had seven phone companies on overlapping turfs.)

Here the first to plant a pole becomes the Incumbent. Other wire-rackets have to plead for a place. The Incumbent can dictate terms. These can be appealed to court but that can take years, years of lost income and opportunity. The terms may be kinder for non-competitors (power and telephone) and brutal for competitors (ISP#1 and ISP#2).

Also there is a concept of Natural Monopoly. It does not make sense to have multiple power companies on the street (or didn't, before Smart Meters). I do think the two ISPs jousting for my business are just stealing each others' lunches.

And another issue, partly solved with improved cabling. In 1888 NYC telephones were wired with individual lines for each customer. So many wires they darkened the streets. Specifically there was a major blizzard which dropped most of the poles, left streets tangled in iron wire (copper was too good). While the blizzard was fatal enough, the wire snarl really complicated rescue and recovery, which is why there are no overhead lines in downtown NYC.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/2012/07/12/back-story-in-late-1800s-new-york-city-buried-wires-after-a-natural-disaster-3/

As it happens, *here* the pole incumbent is the electric company (du jour). 80 years ago they allowed the phone company cheap space (because the telco's temporary poles were failing and snarling power lines). Then the TV Cable operator. And now the phone company is hanging fiber over copper like it is still 1939. While there is a bloody great ugly rat-snarl of fiber-ends across the street, I think it will mostly stay up, and only one RoW to trim.

Bernie Sanders clocks in with 4-day workweek bill thanks to AI and productivity tech

PRR Bronze badge
Devil

Let's remember that Bernie, all the DC congresscritters, mostly work a 3-day week. Monday and Friday are travel days.

Usually Tuesdays start late and Thursdays end early.

Yes, they occasionally burn midnight oil to beat a bill into (our) submission, but most days are light social sessions, not hard labor (that's for staff).

Their "off" days back with their constituents probably are a lot of schmoozing for money or votes or support, but these guys/gals LIKE to do that (it terrifies me).

I'm actually OK with legislatures working short hours. The less they are in session the freer we can be. I remember when they air-conditioned DC and also NJ; before that NObody hung around in the humid summers. Year-round legislaturing was a landmark in the enshitification of governance.

'Chemical cat' on the loose in Japanese city

PRR Bronze badge

Re: Poor Kitty

> That cat is probably already dead.

But not the hex-chrome- that will stay poisonous through several layers of scavengers. Dogs, rats, other cats.... eventually the hex-chrome will be dispersed across so much dead meat that the next shift of scavengers will just be VERY SICK, not 100% dead. People (and children) will try to "help" and in turn be poisoned.

Didn't think small animals would get in the vat shed? I'm trying to be polite, but I know Japanese workers are not that dumb. Even in Maine we can't keep the groundhogs out, or keep the stray cats from chomping the ultra-reclusive Star-Nosed Moles.

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

PRR Bronze badge
Facepalm

Re: Maybe a typical Oz thing?

> the 6 PC LAN ... I noticed that he had leased a brand new Holden Commodore 5.3 litre V8, and suspect ... used the money for the car lease...

We had a 6 PC network in a ticket office. One day the asst office manager showed up in a new Audi Convertible (drop-head?). Audis were so rare in the USA that I did not bother to note the model or trim-level. We just knew that NObody in the division had the income to import/support a car like that. Did she have a Sugar Daddy? Tongues wagged.

One day the head office manager came in on her day off and found odd notices in the FAX machine (yes, that old). The asst OM had been doing some kind of credit card skimming and deleting the evidence before the head OM saw it. Questions raised, police called, job lost, eventually pretty Audi repossessed.

There was an unrelated fraud in the next office soon after. The purchase order system was being dragged out of the 19th century toward a 20th century and beyond. The Great Leap was not monotonic and a sharp accountant could get checks sent to cronies on just her personal approval. One day the email (yes! limping to the future!) went out "Suzzette has left the organization. All her responsibilities have been re-assigned to Robert..." and shortly after "All P.Os. now need more signatures..."

Rancher faces prison for trying to breed absolute unit of a sheep

PRR Bronze badge
FAIL

> the word 'sheep'. (You know those little fluffy docile cloud with leg things)...

Ummm, Rocky Mountain 'sheep' are NOT Little Bo Peep's tame sheep. They don't stand in pasture but more often on the side of a cliff. While they prefer to walk away from strangers, they will turn on predators. Those horns are not just for hanging clothes but can rip you a new hole. They are a challenging hunt and I did not know they needed to be super-sized.

Wallabys in Scotland? Ah, some guy thought it was a good idea.

There is also prairie bison ("Buffalo") on Catalina Island. Brought in to shoot a western movie, no predators, Catalina humans are too laid-back to eat them all, they get to be a hazard.

But why worry? Japanese Knotweed WILL strangle the world soon.

Exchange Online blocked from sending email to AOL and Yahoo

PRR Bronze badge

Re: Alternatively, perhaps just pick up the phone and have a chat

> procure a device from the museum called a "dial-up modem" ;-)

When I moved to the woods of Maine in 2009, I thought there was data here, but they did not mean "now".

When we called the telco they got right on it, unlike the TV Cable operator who was and is a bunch of morons. But the telco cables and concentrators were old and tired. I spent the first couple months here at 19,000 baud good days, under 9600 baud other days.

2009 is not all THAT long ago. And this woods is on the way between two "large towns" (large for Maine).

Now I have two data offers, but I keep the modem for reasons.

PRR Bronze badge

> the two dozen people with Yahoo email will be distraught at this development

Citation?

Aside from Yahoo, other mega-ISPs moved their freemail to Yahoo. ATT.NET and WORLDNET.ATT.NET moved to Yahoo a decade ago. Yahoo was semi-successful monetizing portals which AT&T was never good at, so they could do free.

For much of the decade ATT/Yahoo mail was as good as G-mail, pretty much. (Aggravating but free, so....)

IMHO MS's mail services are very much worse than Gmail or Yahoo, and have been for a couple of decades.

Caffeine makes fuel cells more efficient, cuts cost of energy storage

PRR Bronze badge

> Fuel cells work somewhat like batteries. They generate power by converting the chemical energy of a fuel (or electrolyte) and an oxidizing agent into electricity. This is typically hydrogen as a fuel and oxygen as an oxidizer.

This sounds a LOT like an "engine". Fuel and oxidizer. HYDROcarbon and Air.

Cisco is a fashion retailer now, with a spring collection to prove it

PRR Bronze badge
Facepalm

> it shows off its tech for retailers.

Cisco should hire tech-competent technicians. I was startled to find myself shopping in Australian dollars (my antipodes), something very small websites can do correctly now.

In any currency, those prices are obscene for self-promoting goods. I have shirts from beer and tool companies, free. For wearing your brand on my ass, pants should be half-price. Instead one pair is more than I spent all pandemic.

Friends who still watch the Cisco-sphere say this is typical of all they do.

Intern with superuser access 'promoted' himself to CEO

PRR Bronze badge
Big Brother

Re: First in, first out!

> Gopher, Pine, Telnet & FTP were how things were done. .... a fakemail script. ....to send email from a false email address.

I believe you remember it this way; how else would you know "pine"?

I pined, and I remember it asked you who to be "from", but I can't/won't find pine docs today (and sure can't ask anybody to trust my memory). There was some forking-around with 'Alpine' and an 'Elm', and 'Mutt' seems to be about the last tree standing. Mutt Docs clearly say the user has a keystroke to edit the FROM: Esc f {edit-from} edit the From field

On an unrelated note: we often pined over dial-up. For the first year the dial-in server would serve anybody, then they added username/password and told us YOU MUST LOGIN! Indeed if you gave a username and a wrong password, no-go, leading to a lock-out, you had to bring an ID to the Lab to get re-set. But my brightest professor discovered that two ENTERs at the prompt bypassed that annoyance. (While teaching him a new trick, I noticed that he got in a LOT faster than I could, and not just finger-speed.)

An engine that can conjure thrust from thin air? We speak to the designer

PRR Bronze badge

>> "...something out of science fiction." **** "A.T.: The concept of ion engines is pretty old. I think during the '60s there was some talk....."

The ion talk was mature when I was a lad in the 1960s. One science fair project was a pin in a straw on a string with a high voltage power supply. The differential ion-push between blunt head and pointy end gave a teeny thrust, and if you pulsed it to match the pendulum swing it "worked". (And as a lad I could see that the power supply mass was millions of times larger than the available thrust, so this was not a fire-free jet-pack.)

Campbell, Asimov, and Chandler are not answering my call. An 'interplanetary ion rocket' was painted-up for a 1959 book: https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/images/enginelist/ionEngine04.jpg seen at https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#ion But before that you would not have to explain "ion drive" to any wide-awake audience, because "tubes" (gas and vacuum) had ions good and bad. (Thyratron works by ions. Vacuum tube stops working when ions clog it.)

Low-orbit ion drive was not (AFAIK) in Science Fiction. Clearly it can't work very well. SciFi likes the Big Rockets, not hummingbird farts.

Taploo may be right that there is a narrow swath of near-space and low-orbit and limited corrections where ionized air boost may save a few grams over N₂H₄. Simply losing the mission-size gas tank for BYO gas propulsion saves kilograms.

Chrome users – get an alert when extensions are in danger of falling into wrong hands

PRR Bronze badge
Facepalm

Re: Sounds like engagement farming...

> Makes me think "Matt" isn't being honest about.........

Thanks. That adds background. On the face of it, Matt is explaining and educating. Like a gun or drug dealer explaining how a bullet or syringe works. The book is $40-$50, and maybe Matt can be content with that income. His students have to find their own gimmick.

I suspect The Register ought to be ashamed, well, slightly dismayed, they fell for spreading this guy's work. But that never stopped ElReg before.

PRR Bronze badge
WTF?

Looks dubious already!

The under-new-management page on the Chrome store has prominent link to extensionboost(.)com which claims to be:

ExBoost is a collaborative network of browser extensions that want more users and more reviews.

Extensions add ExBoost slots inside their UI. These slots will show promotions for similar extensions, or reminders to review your extension.

ExBoost is free for the balanced traffic plan. You can promote your extension more often in the ExBoost Dashboard (currently in private beta).

i.e. extensions promotion?? Is under-new-management legit or a shill?

Olympic-level server tossing contest seeks entrants – warranty voiding guaranteed

PRR Bronze badge

> This just HAS to be live streamed. Anyone got a link?

No. Server is down. All available hardware has been thrown into the breech.

May be of interest: tickets run 500 Euro up to 2000 Euro "VIP" which seems to allow you to sell stuff.

We need an outlaw league. When NHRA made drag-racing squeaky-clean, and banned nitro, and Circle-tracks banned billboard size wings, "outlaw" drag strips" and "outlaw tracks" let you run what you brung. With prizes! I know an all-concrete underground room perfect for high-violence server flinging.

Supermium drags Google Chrome back in time to Windows XP, Vista, and 7

PRR Bronze badge

> in the PC XT days (4.7MHz 8086 ! *) ..... ..... * I upgraded the PC hardware with an NEC V20 processor, which ran at 8MHz...

The IBM PC XT used the 8088. This, like the 8086, was 16-bit inside, but the 8088 was 8 bit on the outside. Any real data had to be eaten in two bytes. 8-bit I/O and RAM was far more affordable that year.

The V20 in an IBM XT still clocked 4.77MHz. (The V20 was released in 8 and 10 speed but on the PC-XT mobo it only ran the 4.77MHz.) The V20 had twice as many transistors and a cleverer instruction processor so did a lot more work per second than a 8088. My dim recoolection on half-hour simulation runs is that a V20 would do the job in 70% of the time.

In this day of 4- 8- and 10-core processors, it is hard to remember the pure joy of a very marginal increase.

V20 also had a 8080 mode, handy to run CP/M. In fact I think Ward Christensen's pioneering CP/M BBS got ill and was rebuilt on a V20.

V30 was the same deal for 8086 machines. Less of a boost cuz the 8086 already had 16-bit I/O.

Lenovo to offer certified refurbished PCs and servers

PRR Bronze badge

> Dell ....Their 'Dell refurbished' which is the second-hand stuff and has a separate site really isn't - prices are pretty high

Sample of one: I got Dad an older small-form Dell from the company used-goods site, and was pleased with it. I maybe could have got $50 cheaper from a 3rd-party, but I have had hassles that way too.

DO read the description carefully and know your market. In that class 99% of machines had SSDs, but the specific machine I clicked was a rotating drive, and not even a good one. Having spoiled myself with a SSD, the HDD machine felt pokey. But Dad had never had an SSD.

It's that most wonderful time of the year when tech cannot handle the date

PRR Bronze badge
Angel

Re: Don't people test edge cases any more?

> years that are divisible by 25000 are not leap years

I'll keep that in mind. When the time comes.

Hold up world, HP's all-in-one print subscription's about to land, and don't forget AI PCs

PRR Bronze badge
Holmes

Re: Just print, damnit!

> install bloat ware ... network wifi credentials to HP...... give them your credit card info too, .... crapware to turn on the USB port. ... watch your accounts get drained for ....

So who IS decent today? My Brother MFC-J825 has given me no crap, but I notice it is over 10 years old and only an HPLJ 2P lasts that long. (Or a Diablo......) And a cursory glance tells me Brother is all over the Subscription idea.

Epsom used to be wretched software, and I hold long grudges.

Had a gov-spec Lexmark once, horrible experience.

There aren't that many brands in the consumer printer racket.

Light duty TROUBLE-FREE duplex color, prefer La$er or a very waterproof ink. $400??

Miracle WM, a new tiling window manager built on Mir

PRR Bronze badge

> Windows (sic) keystrokes ... ... seems to me there is a myriad of possible solutions to my user-befuddlement, but installing a tiling window manager is just about the last remedy that comes to mind.

Any human-finger interface (HFI?) which does not support key-maps with 2 or 3 pre-made 'common' keymaps in the package is, IMHO, severely flawed.

Ah, no, we all type on a fondleslab screen with several key keys several SHIFTs away. (And different every generation- my older cellfone I avoided "#' in passwords but the new Moto makes "$" especially awkward.)

Greener, cheaper, what's not to love about a secondhand smartphone?

PRR Bronze badge
Trollface

"Refurb" can mean everything. I've bought refurbs which appeared to be un-booted customer returns (wrong color?). Even some I doubted had met a customer, just over-stock without full warranty. OTOH Amazon sold me a "refurb Fire" with a smeared screen, crack in the jack, stuck in a boot-loop---- abused (by who?) and just re-sold un-touched.

When I find a sales channel that I think does actual testing, I *prefer* a refurb because I know the freshly-made units don't get minimally exhaustive testing, but an honest refurber will test a lot of details. My latest laptop has a lot of miles on it, some rubbed keytops, and a declared broken camera, but is otherwise sweet and fresh. At 20% what it cost new.

OSIRIS-REx probe sucked up more asteroid crumbs than hoped

PRR Bronze badge
Alien

Fantastic snatch. THIS DUST CAME FROM ANOTHER PLANET!!!

But.... 20 years ago any half competent web-worker could make an image "gallery" with NEXT buttons, instead of going BACK to the gallery to get another image. Or does this one do that and they hid the Next buttons too good for my eyes?

Dave's not here, man. But this mind-blowingly huge server just, like, arrived

PRR Bronze badge

> boot on a failed drug screen for Jazz Cabbage even though it's technically legal...in the state

Alcohol is legal in most states, yet many companies will sack you for being drunk on the job.

Forgetting the history of Unix is coding us into a corner

PRR Bronze badge

Re: Step away from the keyboard......

> everyone knows that a computer has a screen, a keyboard (or other HID), a shell or other UI software and so on.

Long ago a computer (no longer a low-paid math student) was a mysterious machine in a faraway office that sent us utility and credit bills on "do not spindle" punchcards.

And MADE MISTAKES!!!! Or at least we blamed "the computer" for all bureaucratic problems.

Oh, and blinkin lights and constantly-spooling tape drives.

I don't think the unix folks were directly involved in telephone exchanges (AT&T/Bell was a VERY big operation). The ESS project was very special, made most computers look like toys. (look-up) Ah, the 3B20, running a unix, added features the ESS hadn't contemplated.

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

PRR Bronze badge

Re: "hundreds of millions of Windows 10 devices are destined for landfills"

> ...plenty of XP machines out there, chugging ... ... Win 7 machines...

In this house: 2 humans, 2 dogs, 2 WinXP, 2 Win7.

RIP John Walker, software and hardware hacker extraordinaire

PRR Bronze badge

> "one strike and you're out" policy on poorly written English,

I gotta get off the internet. I keep reading this as "one strike and your out".

Since days of CompuServe forums, _I_ have always felt that if I had 10 readers it was worth my 5 seconds to put all the letters in, than to force 10 readers to work an extra second each to catch my meaning. Theres two much fuckin lasiness tooday.

CableMod recalls angled GPU power adapters to prevent fiery surprises

PRR Bronze badge
Flame

Re: 12V is rather unsuitable for 500 odd Watts anyway

> 12V is rather unsuitable for 500 odd Watts

I don't disagree...... but car starting systems have been OtoO 12V 200 Amps, 2,400 Watts, since I was a boy (and longer in Register-land; I was weened in a 6V >1800W Studebaker).

Yes, they are 3/8" BOLTED connections on #00 cable, frame return, on massive metallic batteries and motors. And they DO give trouble, even to the point of smoke. (But not usually inside the house.)

Dutch insurers demand nudes from breast cancer patients despite ban

PRR Bronze badge
WTF?

How does the company know....

> forcing breast cancer patients to submit photos of their breasts

What does that prove?? How does the company know the photo is of MY(*) breast? As said, there's lots of breasts online. Many very impressive but also surely some disappointments. Also I remember Chinese-language newspapers advertising breast operations with explicit before-and-after photos: submit a before-photo. ---Hey! "breast reconstruction" in an UN-safe search browser turns up appropriate images (obviously).

Nobody wants pictures of my man-parts, my gall-bladder. The hospital THREW OUT pictures of my appendix (that was an impressive scar).

(*) Yes, male-type people get breast diseases and sometimes reconstruction.

Amazon overcharges shoppers with Buy Box algorithm, fresh lawsuit claims

PRR Bronze badge
Alien

> what the hell does USPS do that they're slower than the rubbishy free postage from China?

USPS "subsidizes" China Post.

Historically the rich countries support post from poor countries. In days of actual Mail Order, it often balanced. And China was always one of the poor countries.

USPS has its own problems, not entirely self-inflicted. Is a terrible place to work. Meanwhile China worked cooperatively to boost export sales, including taking advantage of historical Postal Union agreements.

China's sweetheart deal will be trimmed at some future Postal Union vote. Meanwhile China ships for free. And its workers incentivized to move the mail quickly.

PRR Bronze badge

Re: It's not just the 'Buy Box'--Amazon's magic is everywhere. Be very careful...

> the cost of some items moved into the 'Cart' somehow, mysteriously, tend to increase in price

The price (not the cost).

Over at eBay (a den of different snakes), twice this month I had the opposite experience. Put a 'vintage' buy-now blanket on WatchList, two days later I get an "offer" for 20% lower price. Two out of three tries.

Amazon also plays a game of stuff in Wishlist. Prices go up and down randomly, usually just a few pennies. One item has dropped 38% in 2 years but is the kinda item which does that.

PRR Bronze badge

TIL: if you buy a brand-name charger on Amazon, and when it arrives it turns out to be fraudulent, and you say so in a review and then return the product..... Amazon will claim "we unfortunately could not verify that your account purchased this item on Amazon." Even though I have all the Ordered, Shipped, and even the "Your review is live" emails. A friend comments: "inneresting way to protect makers of shoddy merch."

JetBrains' unremovable AI assistant meets irresistible outcry

PRR Bronze badge
Trollface

Baggage

> allow its customers to get rid of it. .........they come with baggage...

Buy an airplane ticket. They will lose your baggage.

aint got time to take a fast train

AMD crams five compute architectures onto a single board

PRR Bronze badge
Devil

> ...likely leave half the capability sitting idle...

I think the thinking is: you can get sample code for almost any function, but not always in the CPU-family you had planned. With this mixmaster architecture you can run each code function on the platform it likes, no porting.

> ...or be too complex to maintain on the software side.

Yeah, well, that's not the hardware vendor's problem, eh?

Raspberry Pi Pico cracks BitLocker in under a minute

PRR Bronze badge

Re: Yeah, but....

> At which point, we can only use a state-mandated OS in a state-mandated way on state-mandated hardware. A tech dictatorship.

Can you say 中国计算机 ?

IPv4 address rentals to mint millions of dollars for AWS

PRR Bronze badge

Re: Bit rich given they're blocking of IPv6 ISPs

> My ISP doesn't support IPv6 and seemingly has no plans to.

That's what I thought about Spectrum Home, v4 forever; but a year+ ago I realized I silently had a v6. WhatsMyIP brings up the v6 number faster than the v4 address so v6 may be primary?

The FCC wants to criminalize AI robocall spam

PRR Bronze badge

Re: Just hang up!

> I always hang up within seconds if I receive a robocall.

I pass them off to the dog. Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark

Robo-machinery is cheap but not quite free. The longer we tie-up their resources the less attractive their business is.

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

PRR Bronze badge

Re: Well, duh.. Time for DC?

> Historically appliance motors (..., vacuum cleaners...) would have been AC synchronous

I don't know where you shop. In the US in most of the 20th century, vacuum cleaners were "Universal" which is a bastard DC machine. Same for most small power tools, hand-drills and homeowner power saws. (Also the true AC motors are almost all some form of "induction", not synchronous, slipping behind the utility 50 or 60 cps.)

The point of variable drive seems to be speed-control, which especially allows damping the SURGE at turn-on. My heat blower would dim the lights, my well pump still does. If it could start from zero instead of trying to hit 3,500 from a dead-stop, the current could ramp gently.

Residential utility power companies do NOT want redundant loops. It's all tributary. Here in the woods I know roads (and even a whole town) fed from both ends but not linked in the middle. You drive along and the power lines just stop for a quarter mile. No "ring-main" thinking here! Same reason ethernet gear fears loops. Logic- and line-level loops don't start fires and are easily broken. Power-level loops are more costly. (However for obvious reasons more "smart" switching is coming to power utilities. Smart meters are a major step in knowing where the problems are.)

Yes, DC everywhere is coming but don't hold your breath. Conversion from 7,200V to 230V is essential (unless you truly have good on-site generation) but AC transformers are everywhere and financed on very long time-scales.

How not to write about network security – and I'm speaking from experience

PRR Bronze badge
Devil

> The best way to learn about network security is to break in to stuff.

Yes. Back in 1976 "we" were on the ARPAnet and "visiting" university and military servers. Mostly looking for a better STARTREK game, but always thinking "Where's the good stuff?" and "What can I get into that the operator didn't think to hide?"

And before that, in 1959, DisneyLand was a lot under construction, and I was the little brat looking under the fences to see what was back there and interesting.

While you don't get a comprehensive overview of Security by sneaking in and rattling doors, without that sense of forbidden exploration it's all too-too dull and useless.

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

PRR Bronze badge

Kettle watts matters. The 1,200W warmers in the US heat so slow the water goes stale before it get more than slightly hot. (Yes, a microwave IS better than a US domestic pot, because faster, water not dead-flat by the time it gets to working heat.)

> Standard US sockets, cables are 15A, so at 110V that’s ~1600W max kettle power. In the UK kettles are mostly 3000W so boil water in about half the time it takes in the US.

Actually a "long-running" load here must de-rate to 80% (a historical bad compromise). So 1,440W is the number. Less than half, more than twice as long. BUT if someone has put a US-type plug on a UK-market kettle, Ohms are conserved, not Watts. Half voltage, same R, makes half current. Half voltage and half current makes QUARTER Power, at least 4X the heating time. If you are not going to feed it 200+ Volts, a UK pot on US power is just water abuse. Or boiling a frog.

Salting the Urn: Mess halls and cafeterias in the US often made coffee in 10 gallon (37.8541 liter) urns. After some hours it goes blatantly vile (never mind it often starts vile). Reputedly a shake of salt makes it fresh again. It doesn't; but this is part of why most US coffee was (and is) pretty dreadful.

This the first I am hearing of "...the perceived monopoly of the East India Company." So there was a non-zero number of other merchants? But all obligated to collect tax, of course? Throwing tea in the harbor did not lead to the revolt, the (perceived) high royal taxes (and our piratical culture of tax avoidance) led to revolt.

BOFH: Looks like you're writing an email. Fancy telling your colleague to #$%^ off?

PRR Bronze badge
Pint

> In my younger days we actually used 95% grain Alcohol for cleaning...... It was great for cleaning things. Evaporated quickly and left little residue.

Here also. And paid full price plus sin-tax. Due to puritanical past (and national rum-running), in the USA most common alcohols are very aggressive, or heavily taxed, or leave noxious oils behind. In mag-tape systems, EverClear (95% ethyl alky) from the liquor store is a fine cleaner. Just C2H5OH + pinch of H2O, nothing else.

"Everclear is also used as a household "food-grade" cleaner, disinfectant, or stove fuel alcohol because its fumes and odor are less offensive than isopropyl, rubbing, and denatured alcohol..."

$14 for a small flask (in 2001!) is absurd per gallon but on swabs worked out to like a dollar a year. Because I am a lapsed alcoholic (lost weekends kinda drinker, ex) it was risky to keep EverClear in my shop (it might also raise eyebrows among my wine-drinking overlords), so I transferred it from shiny glass to a dull brown plastic photo-developer bottle, uck.

I can now actually buy good ethyl by the drum in my state. Rated food-grade but not sold for drinking, intended for food and beer machinery cleaning.

Datacenters could account for a third of Ireland's electricity by 2026

PRR Bronze badge
WTF?

Re: Domestic and Datacenters price per kWh

> Irish households ...0.52 $/kWh, ... UK the price stood at 0.44 $/kWh. ..., in the United States, residents paid almost three times less."

I wish. In Maine (not cheap but far from the most expensive), last month I paid $209.74(1) for 702 kWh, $0.30/kWh. The month before(2) I paid $265.25 for 838 kWh, $0.32/kWh.

"almost three times less" would be $0.17 to $0.15/kWh. I have not seen such rates in normal(3) places in decades.

(1) This is generation, delivery, and taxes combined. I also pay $10/month 'insurance' on a 500 foot private line; this is very unusual but I'm way back in the woods.

(2) Maine has a plan to smooth-out cost fluctuations. This went wrong in 2022, rates not normally this high. Even the this-month number $0.30 is high, but so is everything this year.

(3) Parts of the NorthWest and some of the SouthEast have ample water-power and massive (political) government subsidy. My niece in Oregon paid a quarter what I paid in New Jersey; yes, much less than 15 cents.

Subway's data torpedoed by LockBit, ransomware gang claims

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Devil

This is just sad. Subway has been on the skids since their spokes-dude was arrested, but particularly since allegations of adulterated fillers (tuna, chicken), allegations that Subway strongly denies on dedicated websites (McDonalds does not bother to have a worm-burger denial site). Anecdotally, Subway sales must be WAY down over the last several years. Two near me closed, the one remaining is in a fastfood desert. The salary of the bulk of Subway workers is easy to guess (and below local average). Subways was found to be violating Australian workplace laws. (Many of these "Subway" charges are actually against the local owner/operator franchises, not the master corporation.) Ireland calls Subway bread 'cake' because 10% sugar. The 'footlong' is 11 inches. There's a lot of hand-work on cold food and repeated hepatitis outbreaks. 'The U.S. House of Representatives: "Subway is the biggest problem in franchising and emerges as one of the key examples of every abuse you can think of."'--- that's the pot calling the kettle black.

BreachForums admin 'Pompourin' sentenced to 20 years of supervised release

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> the Pegasus process doesn't shut down cleanly when iOS devices are rebooted, leaving an entry in Shutdown.log

TO DO: read-up on iOS shutdown process, fix Pegasus bug so it shuts-down squeaky-clean, and re-release.

Junior techie had leverage, but didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation

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We are not going to fix blame from a one-sided tale filtered through a cutely clever editor.

But we can brain-storm.

In serious work, Utility Power Systems, if there is more than one person on the job it starts with a Tailgate Meeting. The boss calls the others to his truck tailgate, outlines the job, asks for comments objections or better ideas, then says how we will do it, assigns specific tasks. 11,000 Volts, half-ton, 40 feet in the air or down in a manhole, out of sight of the other team members..... you gotta all know what you are doing! (Even on one-man jobs, that man may pick his path and then call his supervisor for heads-up and what-if and FYI.) As some here said: multiple fingerprints on the mess-up. Blame shared is sometimes blame spared.

Tick-Box Lists can be done on scrap 2x4 wood.... how carpenters do it. Yes, there are many high-tech ways but whatever. WRITE DOWN the rack-slot so both boss and grunt are on the same page and the same screws.

> I've bagged groceries a few times!??

That's become a lost skill. The local takeout/away consistently puts the hard heavy items on top of the soft mushy item. (They also turn the frozen dairy treat upside down, but that is a bit of snark at McD's which can't even get that right.)

University chops students' Microsoft 365 storage to 20GB

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Re: 20GB?

> When I was at Uni we had 100KB storage

I remember those days. Also begging for more. (As Staff.) Eventually plateaued at 10MEG and lived in that for a decade. (Why I have no historic emails.)

This is not a McGill thing. As 'Retiree' I got the same memo from my (former) university. 30GB; which seems ample to an old 10Meg guy but..... ah, rant omitted.

"Due to the changes, storage for.... will be limited to 30 gigabytes (GB) starting on June 18, 2024. The vast majority of...accounts will not be impacted by this change. About 98% of ....accounts have storage falling below these new limits."

Get off my lawn!

FDA approves AI-powered skin cancer-screening device that's just a teensy bit tricorder-ish

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> the disease can be curable if detected early.

In practice there are "different kinds" of skin cancer. Some are indolent (you die of anything else first) and some kill quick. Melanomas, squamous, basal.... Yes, an at-hand first triage tool is valuable but still just a start.

> $199 per month to treat up to five patients

At small clinics in rural places (Maine, but also Nebraska, western Oklahoma....) we may not have 5 suspected cases a month. Yes we could charge one guy $199 but his insurance may not stand for it. (They should: the cost of un-caught skin cancers may be very much more than hundreds of bucks, but insurance also like short-term economy.)

Sorry to hear of your punch-wound, Simon.

WINE 9.0 improves ability to run 32-bit Windows apps on 64-bit-only xNix

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Re: What windows version does it report as

> ...TAX SOFTWARE, which irritatingly requires newer and newer versions of windows to work. .....need to go buy an El Cheapo CPU box with winders 11 on it JUST to do taxes (including corporate taxes, so there ya go). ... .... ....who KNOWS what incompatibilities lie in wait...

FWIW: last year's H&R Block ran fine under Win7. I get a strong feeling they have never changed the core engine. Some interface oddness (like menu non-cursors) have been around more than a decade. It still tells me to "connect to the internet" before it checks for updates, and IIRC defaults to a very low speed for transfer time estimates.

OTOH, a $300 flaptop or mini-PC comes with 10 today and 11 next year, which may be less than you pay a Preparer once.

Not to mention that the trend is to default to "Online" or "in the clouds" tax preparation. So they can study and monetize your data at leisure. Then you only need an approved Browser. And if they want to get the CellPhone-Only market, they have to be somewhat tolerant on that.

For other reasons not relevant here I will never run H&R again, and will not run TurbidTax since they root-kitted me 20 years ago, so I'm off to a list of less arrogant vendors.

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

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> "-" no longer seems to work.

Dogs don't understand negation. "NO treat" means "TREAT".

Cloudflare defends firing of staffer for reasons HR could not explain

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Re: Employee rights? What are those?

> Very poor fact-checking on this article...

You probably should be reading The New York Times, The Atlantic, or Snopes. The Register is notorious for snark-based entertainment.

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

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> EVs cause a lot of potholes and represent a huge hole in tax revenues compared to the fuel duty and vehicle excise duty that are levied on ICE vehicles.

> Governments WILL start taxing them when they have finished stamping out ICE vehicle production.

The deluxe "Prime" RAV4 is a half-ton heavier than the ICE and lesser hybrid RAV4s because battery to go 15 miles without starting the engine. The lesser RAV4s are not exactly light, so that 4,400lb (2000kg) "Prime" must be hard on pavement. MY pavement funded by MY 40+ years of gasoline purchases. While the current RAV4 Prime does buy fuel (near as much as a pure gasoline RAV4), the future is all-electric.(*)

(US) Govs *must* (well, should) start taxing non-fuel vehicles long before ICEs are "stamped out". Road tax money gets spent as fast as it comes in. If it stops coming in (because stamp-out) we will all be sorry. Not just the busted-axle drivers, but the Pavement Contractors who are traditionally major supporters of all politicians.

There may be some overlap because Heavy Trucks are not really going to electrify this election cycle (the port of San Diego out-haul electrics barely dent the needs) and their fuel taxes are much higher per gallon and per day than our cars.

Yes, a heads-up fix would be to drop the fuel tax and get road-funds by Weight times Miles (times Speed?). The vehicle brain can know all this and 4G-cell it to a Traf-O-Data service, get monthly billing.

(*)When I was a mere lad, say 1959, the utilities promoted the ALL ELECTRIC HOUSE. Got a little badge by the doorbell, and in the house sale brochure. The idea lasted longer in TVA and other subsidized areas, but didn't thrive; was even put in a museum. Is that where all-electric cars will end up?

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