Posts by Lotaresco

Re: Now if they could do this with neutrinos...

"The detector might require excess baggage charges though. Fermilab's current neutrino detector is a sphere continuing 800 tons of mineral oil and 1200+ photomultiplier tubes."

I'm scratching my head trying to work out which neutrino detector you are referring to. I'm aware of five neutrino detectors operated by Fermilab. Three of these are the detectors for the Short-Baseline Neutrino Program, being the Short-Baseline Near Detector, MicroBooNE, and ICARUS. These are all Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber designs filled with 270, 170, and 760 tonnes of liquid argon respectively. The detectors are cylindrical. No photomultiplier tubes. The NOvA programme has two rectangular detectors made of stacks of blocks filled with mineral oil. The far detector is 50x50ft by 200ft long. Each module is 50x50x6 feet. Again no photomultiplier tubes. The photon detectors are fibre optic with solid state avalanche photodiodes. The near detector has 300 tonnes of mineral oil, the far detector has 14,000 tonnes of oil.

Re: It's worse than you think...

I just spent ages composing a similar reply. The error on each bearing will be randomly +/- the actual bearing. Hence you can be either side of any of those lines meaning that being outside the cocked hat is more probable than being in it. Many navigators have had an unfortunate rock/hull interface as a result of assuming they are safely inside the cocked hat. Even GPS doesn't eliminate unfortunate position errors. For example I nearly dinged an unlit buoy in the dark despite GPS telling me I was a couple of hundred metres away from it. Low tide and a strong current mean the buoy had been pushed to the end of its chain and there was a lot of chain to cope with the tidal range. There's a reason why "Ooops sorry, left hand down a bit." is the Cry of the Navigator.

Re: Too lenient

"It will never happen, because one thing leads to another, and it could end up with a director of a UK multinational being personally held to account for the actions of the company they control."

I used to work for a pharmaceutical company. The directors were always inclined to grumble about the costs of doing business and they hated the constant complaining from the scientists that products had to be thoroughly tested and shown to be safe and effective. There were occasions where some director or other would try to influence people to launch products that were "marginal" just so they could try to recoup their investment. They didn't care that someone could go to jail because the person going to jail would be a scientist that they saw as a lackey.

Then the FDA changed the rules, introducing "strict liability" that mean that the directors were personally responsible for the safety and efficacy of all of their products. Overnight the business changed suddenly money was no object, every product was to be tested thoroughly, suspect products were taken off shelves, side-effect monitoring (pharmacovigilance) became a well oiled machine and we IT bods were busy creating systems to contain, analyse, and present the data.

It's amazing what fear can achieve.

Re: influencer

There was quite a bit of detail about the directors of this scam company in the Daily Record. I have to say that the only thing that the person in question managed to influence was a dry heave.

"FWIW, Thor is quite a common name in Scandianavia,"

The nice guy who came to tidy up my garden (for a fee, of course) was a Norwegian guy named Thor. He did a good job but I noticed he used neither hammer nor electricity to do his work.

"Is a SOC even enough when you're up against state-backed actors ?"

Not all SOCs are created equal. Some SOCs are certainly enough when up against state-sponsored actors. The rest of the network has to be appropriately engineered too. A SOC, of itself, isn't sufficient. Also the SOC team has to be on top of its game.

Re: Amazing!

"I wonder if they can get time on the resurrected Hubble for further images?"

An optical image of PDS70b has been captured by ESO's VLT.

Re: Probably..

"I'd really love for the police to just say one day "Okay, sure.. We'll stop" - and not patrol or do any of their duties for a whole 72 hours,"

The experiment has already been done in the USA with the defund the police movement. It's claimed that violent crime rose sharply in the areas where police patrols were withdrawn.

Re: Guy Montags worst nightmare...

"Still, looks more like a remote control drone to me rather than full-on robot."

They look more like robots when you see one being used in a work environment. They actually do simple[1] decision making, including knowing where to place their feet to climb or descend stairs, stepping over obstacles and performing autonomous missions. They actually make decisions on the best way for them to perform a mission and over-ride the instructions given to them by the operator. Watch Adam Savage of Mythbusters showing off how Spot works and how he works out his route.

[1] Not that simple in fact. Stuff we do without thinking such as stepping over an obstacle that wasn't there last time we walked on that route, for example.

Re: Porsche in France

"I showed him the owner's manual. He confiscated it and said that I must pay the customs fees for importing the car before he will return the manual.

Do you mean the owner's manual or the carte grise (certificate d’immatriculation)? The owner's manual is a worthless pile of bumf created by the manufacturer that tells you not to drink the battery acid and how a steering wheel works. If you lose one you need a pay a dealer a few Euro to get another one. It doesn't prove ownership of the vehicle. The CG (or Luxembourg equivalent) is an important document that proves that the vehicle is registered. It isn't proof of ownership either. It's actually illegal to be resident in France and to have your car registered in another country, so you were lucky that all he did was seize some paperwork.

Re: How F***ing much?

For the avoidance of doubt, in 1960 there were 1,400 FFr to the £.

Re: Minitel

"it could be lots of things... from the weather forecast, to being able to send emails, to checking your bank account, and much more."

I recall stopping at a truck stop on a long haul drive down the Loire valley. I was astonished by the queue to use the Minitel. It was all truck drivers who were "tramping" and used Minitel to find loads in the area of a drop off so they didn't have to return with an empty truck. It seemed like a great use of resources.

Re: F1 and customs

"Your probable employer was sponsored by TAG and because of that was the only team I didn't supply."

Indeed it was for the team whose boss was famous for not putting a wheel back properly on Jack Brabham's car, causing some harsh words to be said. He seemed to learn from it since he became fanatic for good pit lane procedures.

The actual application we were looking at was re-using some military stuff to squawk compressed data streams back as the cars passed the pit lane. Superseded these days by work I suspect you did to get continuous coverage around the circuit.

Re: F1 and customs

"I worked from the mid 1980's to early '90's for most of the Formula 1 racing teams"

I'm surprised we haven't met. I did similar at the time, although mostly from an address at Woking Business Park.

Because sticking your phone number in a newly created random website - who probably store the details sent - is the thing to do these days...

Plus the "Have I been Zucked" interface appears to have been created by a moron. The search box states that it accepts "Phone Number, Email Address, Full name" but the user has to select which to use in a separate drop-down list halfway down the page which is designed to be difficult to see (black box, black background, tiny dark grey down-arrow way over to the right, no explanatory text. Get it wrong and you receive a snarky comment.

I've no concern about searching for name, phone number, or email since all of them used on FB are false as is the DOB.

Re: Time for the usual security advice

But my date of birth, name, etc haven't changed in years

Well then. It appears to be past time to change them.

Your name must be six or more characters long it cannot contain more than two consecutive characters, it must contain characters from the following categories:

• Uppercase characters A-Z (Latin alphabet),
• Lowercase characters a-z (Latin alphabet),
• Digits 0-9,
• Special characters (!, $, #, %, etc.)