* Posts by John Robson

5178 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2008

Windows 11: Meet the new OS, same as the old OS (or close enough)

John Robson Silver badge

Re: What is an OS for?

And preferably allow a choice of window managers... not every workflow looks the same - the OS doesn't need to be the window manager as well.

Poltergeist attack could leave autonomous vehicles blind to obstacles – or haunt them with new ones

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Automation

“ The overwhelming majority of car crashes are the results of decisions or the lack of well before the brake pedal is applied, however firmly. ”

Well, there is that…. One could argue that that’s *all* incidents, decisions around maintenance and inspection being important decisions as well. But the point was that many people were hitting things when their (late) reactions were actually still “in time”.

Firmly of the belief that licenses should require retests every few years.

Firmly of the belief that various advanced driving courses should be mandated for higher performance vehicles.

Also firmly of the belief that keeping my eyes on the road is a good thing - and that’s what adaptive cruise control and lane keeping allow me to do.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Automation

Stopped traffic is a rather peculiar situation - most current systems don’t deal with it.

I don’t trust the car to slow/stop unless it’s already following something … You have to ask whether failure of the autonomous systems happens more of less often than failure of the nut behind the wheel.

Evidence at the moment is that it doesn’t. Both failure modes are catastrophic, but one system has the opportunity to learn from the mistake, whilst the other doesn’t.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Automation

So you think it’s easier to keep aware of all the vehicles around you when you also have to look away from said other vehicles.

That makes complete sense. /s

I do hope your disdain for driver aids extends to servo assisted brakes, ABS, power steering, and everything else that is basically de tiger at this point. And as for the significant number of cars that will brake *for you* if they detect that you came off the throttle and went onto the brake very suddenly - because many incidents weren’t the result of lack of braking capacity in the vehicle, but lack of brake pressure applied.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Automation

Given that most people can’t or won’t concentrate enough to drive safely anyway…

I use cruise control constantly, did even before I became disabled. Did it hinder concentration - no. Driving is already hard enough without having to monitor dials as well.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Automation

I am aware enough of what's going on, but the assistance virtually eliminates the cognitive load required to maintain gaze stabilisation. So I can take over at any point AND the assistance features are enabling me to do that for more than twice as long as I could without them.

I always welcome an additional set of eyes on the road, whether they belong to a passenger or the car.

Just because you can't maintain awareness of what's around you whilst assistance features make that easier doesn't mean noone can.

There is a point at which you start to trust the automated system too much, but that's a long way off for most automated systems at the moment.

John Robson Silver badge

No, my car hasn't been adapted at all.

Do try not to spout rubbish.

Of course I am still responsible for safely controlling the vehicle, as I would have been if I ran into the back of someone whilst ABS was installed. The fact that the assistive technologies more than double the amount of time I can spend the wheel is irrelevant to the responsibility for the vehicle.

This isn't a car that is advertised as self driving in any way, it just has some assistance features. Having been driven in a Tesla using auto pilot it is a remarkable system. It wasn't, last time I checked, level 5.

No self driving vehicle needs to reach perfection, it needs to beat the average human. That is a task which is probably well within our reach the majority of the time.

Heck, I'd even be happy with a motorway level of autonomy. Drive to the motorway, relax, then drive off the motorway in a fresh state. Just reducing the amount of tired drivers on the roads off the motorways would be a significant benefit.

The problem with the "but sometimes" is that you ignore the benefits of the "most of the time".

So what if the car can't drive you all the way to your destination, if it can put you within ten miles without several hours of fatigue then it has massively improved the safety of all parts of the journey.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Automation

Only as worrying as the incompetence of most drivers.

As a disabled driver I very much appreciate lane tracking and adaptive cruise control, even if my car doesn't seem to grok that dual carriageway NSL is 70 rather than 60, or that speed limits persist around corners. At least use the manual speed limiter setting is nice and easy to use.

PrivacyMic looks to keep your home smart without Google, Alexa, Siri and pals listening in

John Robson Silver badge

Re: misses the point

I'm not sure I'd suggest anyone carries around nitroglycerin, even if it does have a medicinal benefit, the more obvious risks are rather more severe.

The fact that smart speakers have found a place in so many homes is purely down to their benefits. There is certainly an argument to say that we now have sufficient compute capability in very low power devices that we don't need them to be cloud connected at all times, but we wouldn't have got to the point where it's possible to build a "disconnected smart speaker" without the work that was done on the connected versions.

It's like banning all cars because of the deaths motorists cause. Heck, we don't even ban the bloody motorists.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: over 42 per cent of Britons own and actively use a smart speaker,

Anonymous coward....

Anonymous and ablist - there are plenty of people for whom the advent of smart speaker technology has massively increased their independence.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: misses the point

Nothing to do with the ultrasonics, but the advent of voice based assistants has been massive for many - to write them off in the way you did is seriously detrimental to those for whom they make a serious difference.

For most, I agree, they are a luxury - but you can't help throwing the baby out with the bathwater with such sweeping damnation of the devices.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: misses the point

It's the direct to PDF report that could be useful to allow someone to realistically track their actual activity levels.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: misses the point

"I don't possess, and will never allow into my home, networked devices with microphones I cannot mechanically detach."

Really?

No mobile phone of any description, no laptop of any description.

Just be grateful that you live in a bubble where the concept of accessibility either doesn't occur to you, or doesn't make it beyond a ramp into certain buildings.

For many people these devices enable independence.

For very many people they are merely a convenience, but that says more about the fact that making things accessible very rarely excludes anyone.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: misses the point

But a device you can say "this will record in house activity for a week and spit out a report as a PDF - yet it doesn't record conversations" could be useful.

Tim Cook: Sideloading is a disaster and proposed App Store reforms would harm user privacy and security

John Robson Silver badge

Re: User's best interest?

Trivial cost per download, but when you are selling that data to anywhere up to the apparently 1 billion active iPhones in the world today...

It adds up.

I agree that the fact that the "big players" who release free apps aren't paying their way, but that's a different fish for Apple to fry.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: User's best interest?

The data centre bandwidth isn't free, that's all I was saying.

There is an incremental cost - although it is very, very small.

I tried to decouple that from the 30% discussion, because the number wasn't relevant to the point I was making.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: User's best interest?

"The cost for validating and hosting an app is the same whether 1 or a million copies were sold."

So you think their bandwidth is free?

There is an incremental cost, and a cost for the hosting, and it's not unreasonable to charge that on a per sale basis - i.e. those who can most afford to support the infrastructure pay most towards it's upkeep.

Whether or not 30% is reasonable is a different question, I think it's very hard to justify when it is for subscriptions or for in-app purchases, stuff that apple don't have anything to do with. Billing simplicity is only worth so much.

Inventor of the graphite anode – key Li-ion battery tech – says he can now charge an electric car in 10 minutes

John Robson Silver badge

Re: A power station at each garage ?

There are a relatively small proportion of people who can't charge at home (from the numbers I am aware of it's probably around 15%, certainly no higher than 20%), and for those people most charging will be done at other destinations: supermarket charging, workplace charging, shopping centre charging, car park charging...

Lots of places to charge - places where you will be there for a few hours... even a miserly 7kW (most home chargers) charge at ~30mph. So if you are going somewhere 15 miles away for an hour... you don't need anything other than a really slow destination charger.

It's a different mindset in terms of fuel, but it's not an "I'm disabled so I can't", or an "I can't charge at home so I can't use it all".

In terms of accessibility... It is irritating that many of the fast chargers aren't very accessible (often up a kerb), but at least they (for no reason I can fathom) tend to have access aisles.

Fortunately I can walk around the car, using it for support, so the accessibility doesn't significantly impact me - but the choices around access are really odd.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: There still remains......

"While I admire your thinking, I'd argue that in many cases, train travel is often way more expensive than driving"

Absolutely - but it doesn't need to be, train travel should be significantly cheaper than basically any other form of transport.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Why not use appropriate technology?

I quite like the idea of aluminium air batteries as a range extender.

At around 1kWh/kg already, with 2 being projected (and 8 being the theoretical limit) with a relatively easy fuel/refuel system (you'd need to recycle the hydroxide to make it feasible) you don't win any overall efficiency prizes, but... if you're using it as a range extender on rare long journeys rather than as a the primary drive source... then I think it could make some sense (though improvements to charging are almost completely eliminating the issue, I still like the idea of a drop in N00 mile pack.

It would also be something that you could reasonably carry one round permanently - no more range anxiety, because your 'backup pack' is enough to do hours of driving, and it's significantly lighter than an engine or any lithium ion battery pack.

A standardised 25kg unit to be swapped in and out would get you 100 miles currently, 200 projected, 800 theoretical - you could easily have a set of slots for those nice to be able to deplete one completely before swapping it back out.

You don't need to carry them around most of the time, then you drop in the battery, drive - use it to recharge the Li-ion battery, or just to do the baseload of the driving, and then return the battery at the far end in the same way that you return a calor gas canister when it's been used.

John Robson Silver badge

I may well have misread - 800km is alot less than 800 miles, I still think it's probably excessive for the vast majority, but it's quite possible to have vehicles with different battery capacities available for those who are willing to pay the extra.

Parallel hybrid trains are odd, I quite liked the explanation that Technology Connections gave about the volt's series hybrid layout, and that was a sane layout. The electric drive train does make some sense, but really - batteries aren't nearly as bad as you think they are.

If you are only stopping for 15 minutes in an 18 hour trip then you aren't getting nearly enough break to drive that journey safely - I assume you are making multiple such stops, but even so - driving for basically 18 hours straight isn't safe, and for various classes of vehicle isn't legal - that's at least two days (10 hours max each) of driving, with a required rest of 8.5 hours (three per week, the rest must be 10 hours).

So let's take a 16 hour road trip... at 70mph that's 1120 miles.

Looking at 350kW charging and 4m/kWh that's a total of 48 minutes of charging.

Except of course that you don't need to wait to fill up to start, nor do you require a full battery at the end - so you get "one battery charge" of range for free.

A 300 mile battery would therefore take just 35 minutes of charging on a 16 hour journey.

Take some number between those as a your estimate, depending on your tolerance for the orange fuel light.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: re: Currently the EV market is in the EU

I *really* like the sound of the electric motor in my car, or rather the lack of sound of the electric motor.

It means I can have a conversation with my wife, in a fossil fuel car she needs to wear a radio mic and I wear an IEM receiver connected to a neck loop with my hearing aids set to T loop setting.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: re: Currently the EV market is in the EU

that's not an issue with EVs, but with all vehicles nowadays.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: There still remains......

" large number of people relying on on-street parking "

There really aren't as many of those as people make out.

A recent study revealed that a staggering 24% of households didn't have off street parking.

But then again 23% of households don't have a car.

The overlap is neither perfect nor random, but I think it's safe to suggest that 85% of vehicle owners have somewhere to charge at home.

Existing service stations are almost all served by "the electric highway", and their new owners are fitting banks of 350kW chargers throughout the network, so yes "they" can afford it.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: There still remains......

350kW is becoming pretty common.

The bolt may not accept such a high charging rate of course (my car is limited to 50kW).

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Why not use appropriate technology?

Why lug around an engine and all that complexity when you don't need to.

The increased efficiency of large engines running in controlled conditions will offset transmission losses, and that's in the worst case when you don't account for any non fossil fueled power generation in the country. (25-35% for most small petrol engines, 35-50% for modern power plants)

John Robson Silver badge

Re: There still remains......

Exactly - the same is true for an EV, rapid charging is the "last resort", or more often... only ever used on long journeys, where a short break is usually a welcome opportunity to stretch the legs, get some air and a fresh batch of coffee (and dispose of the last batch).

The vast majority of charging is (for the ~85% of households with off street parking for their car) going to be done at home, overnight, where the speed doesn't matter and the cost is very low (even negative at times).

Some of the remainder will be able to charge at work, where again speed isn't an issue.

Most of the rest will use fast (i.e. slower than rapid) chargers at various places throughout the week, whilst they are shopping or eating out.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: There still remains......

That's slightly bogus though - petrol engines are so inefficient that it's not a reasonable comparison.

Additionally you don't need to babysit a car charger, I can go and get my coffee whilst it is charging, you're stuck holding a (heavy, unwieldy, certainly for smaller adults as well as any with any significant upper body weakness) fuel dispenser the whole time.

Is it a faster "charge"? yes.

Does that difference matter? no.

Why not?

Because fast charges are a tiny percentage of the energy that goes into a car. How often do you fill up at a motorway services rather than your local supermarket?

John Robson Silver badge

Re: There still remains......

The time is also completely wasted at a petrol pump, whilst my car is charging I can go and charge myself, and relieve myself of the waste from the previous charge.

John Robson Silver badge

That option is basically going to be battery leasing. It could work, but it's so rarely needed by most that it's not a great option.

If you can charge at 350kW, which is fast becoming the new standard you can add 1200 to 1500 miles an hour... And remember this is only something that is likely on v long journeys (i.e. at a time when you need a break to relieve yourself, rent more coffee and have some food).

I don't particularly see the need for 800 mile batteries, it's completely overkill almost all the time - and adds cost and mass to a vehicle that doesn't need it. 400 mile battery with the capability of charging from 50m to 350m in 13 minutes would be far more sensible (it halves the cost of the battery if nothing else).

Remember that you don't have to supervise a charger like you do a petrol pump.

A 15 minute stop every 4-5 hours is hardly crippling to a journey.

Ryuk ransomware recovery cost us $8.1m and counting, says Baltimore school authority

John Robson Silver badge

Erm

So they're claiming that all work to prevent future attacks is the result of this one attack, rather than what they should have been doing anyway?

Mensa data spillage was due to 'unauthorised internal download'

John Robson Silver badge
Boffin

Often a negative correlation

We've been shown time and again that strong encryption puts crims behind bars, so why do politicos hate it?

John Robson Silver badge

Re: The argument is a bit beyond Priti Patel

*All* arguments are beyond Priti Pratel.

To understand an argument takes a modicum of ability to listen to both sides of a debate. Unfortunately her ears were left bocked when her brain made its escape in an attempt to protect humanity.

It is with a heavy heart that we must tell you America's richest continue to pay not quite as much tax as you do

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hang on

"With enough influence, everything is fungible."

And that's what needs to be stopped - Do I see an easy and obvious solution? No, but then I am neither a tax accountant, nor and economist.

Do I think that a solution exists? I am convinced of it.

Do I think said solution would be implemented? I am convinced it would not, the obscenely wealthy pay for election campaigns in return for these loopholes (and direct contracts nowadays).

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hang on

Or more importantly a form of government that doesn't rely on backhanders through elaborate tax loopholes.

If tax systems were written sensibly I am convinced that:

- More people in, or close to, poverty would be on zero (or better still a negative) tax rate

- Most of the people "in the middle" wouldn't see a significant effect

- Those who rake in more money than any person can possibly spend would pay more, still leaving them with more money than any person can possibly spend

- The treasury would gather more income

Simple might not be adaptable - but in terms of "You saw this much income this year, so we are taxing it at this rate..." that's not necessarily a bad thing.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hang on

"I would go for a flatter % tax "

So basically you don't think poor people should be able to eat.

The difference between getting ten grand on top of a hundred others is negligible in terms of spending power (and here I'm talking about being able to afford food, clothes and a roof (not necessarily a six bed mansion, but a roof).

The difference in getting ten grand on just another ten grand is huge.

It is absolutely right that as a wealthy member of society I should pay more tax (proportionately) than those less well off than me.

What is not right is that as you go further and further up that scale the tax paid goes back down.

I am all for making a simpler tax system, but it must remain progressive.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hang on

"Instead of 'he has more so rob him' surely we should look at how much is being taken off us to be squandered by people who think they can spend it better than us."

So you're advocating for flat taxation?

There are ~30 million people employed in the UK, and the government pulls in about £195 billion in income tax with a further £143 billion in NI.

So that's a flat rate of £11k each.

You can afford that, I can afford that... but for anyone who works part time (ONS median wage £11,234 ) that would leave them with a couple of hundred quid a year.

The concept of progressive taxation is very well established, but is being deliberately bypassed by these individuals, and their individual contributions should be an actually significant chunk of change for the treasury.

And your claim that you could spend the money better is rather laughable. How much of the road network are you going to pay for? how much health service, fire service, police,...

Yes, I'm sure there are parts of the government budget we would all think can and should be trimmed, but that's a completely different question to that of how they raise money to spend on society.

Noone is proposing a wealth tax that would require people to liquidate their primary residence - but when your wealth increase is measured in millions of pounds a year then some proportion of that really ought to be recognised as taxable.

Note that there is already a tax free income band - and the same would likely apply to any tax on gains in wealth, though given the way wealth is accumulated there is a good chance that the vast majority of people would end up in this band.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hang on

I am sure if the secretary had to pay $23.7m (s)he wouldnt consider it less (I am guessing). But this is probably why he hired a secretary, has (s)he?

I suspect that the 19% was less than the secretary paid, not the absolute value.

But you knew that, you were just being deliberately obtuse.

When I was self employed I used to put 50% of my invoice value into an account specifically to pay tax - and that was about right (I got a small bonus each year when my tax bill was confirmed).

I'm now employed, and so my income has already been taxed before I see it, but I still pay >30% on what I see - and I see a lot less income than the zillionaires mentioned, and don't have a large "wealth increase" to use as collateral either.

The AN0M fake secure chat app may have been too clever for its own good

John Robson Silver badge
Joke

Re: One Time Pads.

Just encrypt it with a OTP....

Do you come from a land Down Under? Where diesel's low and techies blunder

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Happened to me as well!

"The embarrasing thing is that we were an oil company, and we were supposed to know about such things!"

Brilliant - I've only been at one company that did DR processes well, and it doesn't come cheap (but it does come with great reliability, which is correctly more important in certain sectors).

The closest I've come to the failed diesel generator is working next door to a company that, supposedly, had it happen.

Given the number of people here who have claimed to have had it actually happen to them... I am more inclined to believe the reports.

Fastly 'fesses up to breaking the internet with an 'an undiscovered software bug' triggered by a customer

John Robson Silver badge

Pretty sure they have said it was a *valid* customer config....

John Robson Silver badge

Re: DSL Modem, RPI, DynDNS

The Pi can probably do a fair amount, DSL is a second limit on the system.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: DSL Modem, RPI, DynDNS

Ah yes... assuming you only want to serve a pretty static/small page to a relatively small audience.

Note, those people aren't the customers of Fastly.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Fastly cost savings

Yeah - that saving figure doesn't apply to you...

That saving figure applies to larger companies.

You might even be best off doing self hosting and just accepting downtime and complete loss of weekend when it occurs.

But when an organisation is significantly larger... then having someone else manage the hardware can be a price worth paying - of course you *could* do it cheaper... but you are paying for them to take the risk of overtime and failed hardware, for them to source and maintain UPS, generators, diverse power and data feeds. For them to maintain the building all these things are housed in... the list goes on.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Fastly 'fesses up'

This wasn't a change they made - it was a customer configuration change which triggered a bug which had been rolled out gently and tested... months before.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Credit where it's due

Hardly a blind roll out - the bug had been rolled out months before, it wasn't until *customer* configuration tripped a specific set of circumstances that it caused an issue.

And the fix is still being rolled out, so hardly a rollout to all nodes...

Wine 6.0.1: For that one weird app on that one weird Mac

John Robson Silver badge
Joke

Re: It's not an emulator

But then you have to expand the acronym...

Good way to get an infinite word count I suppose.

NTT slashes top execs’ pay as punishment for paying more than their share of $500-a-head meals with government officials

John Robson Silver badge
Coat

Whimsy

* The Register has no knowledge of the menu at the meals but couldn’t resist some linguistic whimsy — Ed.

And then ignored the opportunity to use flavour as well...

FBI paid renegade developer $180k for backdoored AN0M chat app that brought down drug underworld

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Stupid cops

"Sure, legalise all drugs. See what that does to people's driving. Then let the cops focus on motoring offences rather than real crime."

On the basis that motoring offences generally affect more people than what you consider to be "real" crime... I think you might have your priorities mixed.

Global Fastly outage takes down many on the wibbly web – but El Reg remains standing

John Robson Silver badge

Re: At Savvo...

Except that you'd expect a "cloud hosted" (or a simple colo) server to be in a building with genuinely diverse power and data feeds. Not something you can necessarily install at every office, particularly if you don't own the office building.