Posts by The man with a spanner

This is how Elon's Department of Government Efficiency will work – overwriting the US Digital Service

Re: Once a lap-DOGE ...

A 50% efficiency gain in heads of the organisation. Look, its working on day one.

AI datacenters putting zero emissions promises out of reach

Re: Batteries not included

"Which pretty much sums up the whole 'renewables' industry. Mostly useless, expensive, and produces a collosal amount of waste."

It is fine however to have loads of coal slag heaps and pump greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere willy nilly and polute our cities with nitrous oxide and fine particulate mater.

Lets all double down down and go for the status quo. Its served us so well in the past and we dont have to bother about improving our environment for our children.

Anduril picks Ohio for 5 million square foot autonomous weapon factory

Unfortunatly Mr Orange T will take all the credit and Mr B's efforts will be forgotten. It is the way of the world.

Still - Arse nil Democracy Won (I hope)

What happens when someone subpoenas Cloudflare to unmask a blogger? This...

The political spheres in Tamworth are clearly just Bollocks.

Does anyone remember clackers?

Re: First Amendment

I'd support Trump invading Tamworth if he were to ride into town in a Tamworth Pig - a Reliant Robbin for the uninitiated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliant_Robin

Japan's wooden satellite exits International Space Station

How is this for blue sky thinking out of the box?

Wallace would give them an up vote.

(for the non Brits amoungst us please refer to the documentary- A Grand Day Out).

I cant help feeling that Mr Musk is really a penguin in disguise, not just a bad odour sorounding the trup man.

See - The Wrong Trousers, and A Murder Most Fowl for furthet evidence.

Re: Guidance?

An Oakey joke!

Zuck takes a page from Musk: Meta dumps fact-checkers, loosens speech restrictions

Re: Sheer Bollocks.

"lickspittles" . . . That's very George Galloway.

Trump's tariff threats could bump PC prices by almost half

Re: Seriously who cares

@ Ashto5

Now that is a brilliant idea.

You could help the cash flow of the country by charging the Social Media providers £1 per person.

Also you could charge £1 on each mail order parcel. This would have the advantage of

A) taxing Amazon

B) razing a pile of money

C)encorage people not to buy £5 worth of stuff per delivery.

Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

Re: Well......

All volumetric measures in cubits please!

Intel sued again over struggling foundry business

Re: "sued yet again by shareholders"

"You don't like what the comapny is doing ?

Sell your shares."

Or.... change the management who manage the company on your behalf.

This tendancy to think the answer to any problem is to sue is insanity. If you are sorting to law to resolve issues you have already lost.

Scumbag gets 30 years in the clink for running CSAM dark-web chatrooms, abusing kids

Re: 2Hope the Other Inmates Take Good Care of Him

I think it is a fair point if this guy is called a pedophile that the description isnt attributed incorrectly. I for one hadn't realised that a child abuser may not be a pedophile and that something else may be going on as well or instead of.

From the point of view of prosecuting and sentencing this scumbag it makes no difference, but from the point of view of understanding what problem is and trying to stop it it makes a big difference.

It is possible for someone to be sexualy attracted to young children (ie a pedophile) and not act on that impulse ie not be a child abuser. I would posit that if you recognise this trait in yourself and seak help to contain and manage it, this would be a good thing.

Personaly I am for robust punishment for those found guilty of child abuse in all its forms. However complex problems dont have simple solutions and it is always wise to understand the problem before "fixing" it.

Kyndryl's consulting business may be less than it seems

Its perfectly rational

If you have a festering bunch of contracts that will never turn a profit it is perfectly rational (if a little unethical) to shove them onto the plague boat and cast them adrift on the ocean.

More fool those that invested in the boat.

Europe's Vega C rocket cleared for launch tonight, first since 2022

Thanks Justthefacts for helping us understand. It makes for a better discusion.

A blind assertion/opinion with absolutly zero attempt to justify or explain this belief.

Go on, you can do better than that.

Hardware barn denies that .004 seconds of facial recognition violated privacy

Re: Alexa, please explain...

Ok, so it is fair game for a security camera to monitor for criminal actvity. In doing so it must logicaly monitor the scene overall and identify NOT criminal activity. If monitoring to identifying non-criminals and ne'er-do-wells is not permisable then the whole secutity monitoring bussiness dies. This seems like an over reaction to me.

Here's how a Trump presidency could change the tech industry

Re: A wake up call for over-reliance on US tech?

Would Firefox like to relocate to Europe (Germany perhaps?) where there is a little more concern for privacy/security.

Re: This is the way the world ends...

Not with a bang but a Wimpy.

Thanks Mr Cooper Clarke.

https://open.spotify.com/track/1rfnt9EOn1dLFiyTSwuHG1?si=d8HnUXbkQIOUEXsDqDXD8w&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A0GbJSduK8qUuLpG91duF0C

US lawmakers dig into FCC's $900M Starlink snub in wake of Hurricane Helene

Re: What?

I hink it is really a Merkin

The force is strong in Iceberg: Are the table format wars entering the final chapter?

Re: Lost and confused

"Iceberg is a type of lettuce with no nutrional value" and is assosiated wth Lizz Truss.

A look under the hood of the 3D-printed, Raspberry Pi powered 'suicide pod'

Serious question

Would it not be better to use Nitrous Oxide (laughing gas)?

You get all the Anesthetic benefits whilst being suffocated.

Less seriously there is the posibility of one of our co-planitarions not being able to source nitrous oxide and substituting a bulk purchase of spray cream. A Darwin Award contender if succesful?

Death Row

So, how many death row establishments have bought large 3D printers in the last week?

'Hyperscale customer' to take massive datacenter site near London

Re: Cooling?

" The net efficiency of the multi-stage heat pumps needed to convert low grade waste heat into 90-110C heat network needs is poor, so the heat network would only get about 25-35% of the heat the DC outputs, with the rest released to atmosphere. "

Forgive my ignorance but why are you proposing to raise the tempetature to 110 degC? I only need 65 deg or so, particularly as it is likely to be an enetgy efficient new build.

Failing that build a leisure center with a big swimming pool. These are being shut down due to energy costs.

Re: Putin says thank you

" give nothing of use back"

not entirly true - the energy gets used once in the data center and the degraded energy gets recycled as heat for houses. So two bangs for your buck.

It always used to amaze me how much energy power stations used to chuck into the air when you could have put a glass house or some other energy consuming bussiness next yo them and harvest essentialy free energy.

Still good to see we are starting to rediscover technology fom a century ago.

As major web browser makers snuggle up to AI, these skeptical holdouts remain

Re: Q:?

Indeed - we need to know

Just asking for a friend though

Lets ask our Musky IT person, he has all the historical analysis uou could possibly need on his X Twitter thingy.

Transport for London confirms 5,000 users' bank data exposed, pulls large chunks of IT infra offline

So not a Russian nor an Islamic Terrorist. The IT men get everywere you know.

Python script saw students booted off the mainframe for sending one insult too many

Re: Somehow became corrupted?

Which somehow is 1 character longer than the BEEP word. !!!!!!

Musk's X, Media Matters headed to trial

Re: Musk gets a Brazilian

Nice Moustache Apartheid man!

Microsoft Bing Copilot accuses reporter of crimes he covered

One eonders what....

One wonders what this device would make of Mr Trump.

Slander or fact?

Netherlands fines Uber €290M for improper EU-US driver data transfers

Re: I don't understand.

So, if you really really want to do some trend analysis of some sort in the states how difficult would iy be to anonamise it?

Any specific personal action will have to be actioned by local management, so you give the local guys the tools and let them manage their staff.

How difficult is this?

I don't understand.

I understand why a company like Uber wants to collect theetails of their employees/opetatives on the varios countries that they operate.

What I don't understand is why they need to ship this data to another juristiction. What use is this data to someone in the USA operation? I cant see it affecting their operation on the ground one jot so compliance should be easy.

Am I missing something or are these people idiots?

NASA will fly Boeing Starliner crew home with SpaceX, Calamity Capsule deemed too risky

Universal human rights

Universal human rights are, I'm sad to say, an arbitary thing that is far from universal. We like to think of it as some deity driven self evident truth when in fact we on this planet cannot agree on these "rights" and they change as time goes on.

Halliburton probes 'an issue' disrupting business ops

Diligently

Why do PR people always claim to work diligently, thay has not always been my experiance.

HMD Skyline: The repairable Android that lets you go dumb in a smart way

Re: 3 years of updates ?

Would it be unreasonable for the phone to come with say 3 years of free upgrade, and the option to pay for up to a further 7 years at a nominal fee, say £20 per year?

We happily pay for car maintenance so why not phone maintenance?

Alternativly, maybe phones can come with 7 years of security updates, but no feature changes. In other words you would stay on the same version of OS that you bought.

NASA pushes decision on bringing crew back in Starliner to the end of August

Re: Boeing suits can't be used in a SpaceX vehicle and vice-versa.

At a base level you need core functionality to be interoperable. Say, basic coms, oxegen, posibly heating/cooling, fits in the seat.....anything else?

Anything else is a nice to have, but the core is a MUST.

Re: It's a political decision, not tech/safety

You wouldn't want a RUDE awakaning for Boing's shareholders.

* Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly Event

Intel's processor failures: A cautionary tale of business vs engineering

Re: "underinvestment in critical manufacturing technologies"

If you are an engineering company you idealy need a visionary engineer running the company. In house lawers and accountants are functionaries, external lawers and accountants are advisors.

If you are running an accountancy company an accountant would probably be a good option.

If you are running a general trading company then a salesman type may work best.

If you run your company well and provide custoners with good products at a good price and you are not profligate you will probably make a profit which will be adequate to keep your shareholders happy as long as they are not gready.

Nokia goes from phones to drones with Swiss service rollout

Good to see a European company providing serious technology in this area and not just leaving it to the chinese or even Iran.

Under-fire Elon Musk urged to get a grip on X and reality – or resign

Re: "Far right"

"Far right"

.. Anything the far left doesn't like.

Also works the otherway round . . Anything the far right doesn't like.

Trite statements don't further the discussion othe than to illustrate the paupacy of your argument.

Michigan probes Musk-backed PAC website that weirdly tried and failed to help register people to vote

Idiots!

What idiot country privatises the management of voter registration to potentaly a plethora of vested intrests.

Oh yes, it will be US - or in my case them.

Google paying to be default search on phones is totally against antitrust law, judge rules

In the EU it would be good if there was a choice screen that offered the option of only acredited EU compliant options.

That should focus minds.

Re: Side effect: Firefox financing almost 100% from setting Google search default

Imperfect solution :

If the MS browser was based on Firefox technology the browser market would be better balanced and Ff would be a little safer away from the clutches of the Goo co.

As I said, imperfect, but better.

Quant

Have you tried the french site Quant. It seams to be maturing nicely.

Inquiry hears UK government misled MPs over Post Office IT scandal

Re: "UK government misled MPs"

Whilst I agree that the various government ministers bear some responsibilty for the failure to act once it became apparent that there were probems that were not being addressed by the two key perpetrators of this injustice. It must be remembered that the post office is by design an arms-length body set up this way so that goverment cannot interfear with day to day management.

In my view it is clear that:

Fujitsu is responsible for creating a badly malfunctioning system and breaking all the rules around good practice in managing live system correction of errors. Dditionaly the were not it appears honest in their reporting of the the extent of the problem to their client, the post office.

The post office are responsible for not managing their contractor effectively, and not challenging hard enough, not managing the progress of the project and when errors started to occur they prefered to beleive that their people were fraudulent and at fault rather than the system. It begars belief that the post office attributed the sudden rise in fraudulent activity by their trusted staff to the staff going bad. The venal paula whatnot's ability to bury her head in the ground is a negative role model to is all.

Dangerous sandwiches delayed hardware installation

Re: Try to keep it culturaly correct please

Bathroom and Restroom may be a universal euphemism in the USA, but not in the UK.

America is not the universe.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Re: Good

With speed limits bouncing around with no consistancy, and the prevalence of dynamic speed limits arbitarily applied it is all too easy to miss the sign telling you of the change.

When you build a system, if you want compliance, you should make it easy to comply with and as predictable as posible.

If you are going to introduce randomising factors such as dynamic speed limits you need technology to cope with human frailty.

Julian Assange to go free in guilty plea deal with US

Re: Sweden

So was Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot - how does that help the discussion?

Mozilla is trying to push me out because I have cancer, CPO says in bombshell lawsuit

Re: Sue cancer

Exactly.

Stage 4 cancer is normaly terminal. You would hope that your colegues were supportive, if only so the rest of the plebs working there didnt see them as total unadulteratid bastards.

Apple Intelligence won't be available in Europe because Tim's terrified of watchdogs

They sort of have a point.

I have no simpathy with the big A restricting 3rd party browser etc, however, AI has a whole slew of known and more importantly unknown risks. A little bit of caution might be sensible here as you cannot put the genie back in its bottle.