Posts by Alan Brown

Letting him stew in a cell for a week is the inexcusable part. There's a thing called "due process" and he was denied it

Re: Understanding

"Georgia cops threw the suspect in jail for more than a week without checking for an alibi"

This is the core of the problem. You might get a facial matching ping, but that MUST be cross-referenced and verified by humans and keeping someone in jail for an extended period because they can't be arsed doing their jobs needs sufficient civil penalties to make them think twice

Make it hurt their budget - $250k/day or more - and it won't happen nearly as much

And make it "Statutory damages" so that local outfits can't argue they're "too high and they make the department hurt" - they're SUPPOSED to do that

Re: My understanding

DNA matching is better served as a way of ELIMINATING people than of matching them

As with fingerprints, an inadequate number of data points is stored for "matching" purposes and false positives crop up regularly

It was OK when only known criminals had their data stored (allowing repeat offenders to be rapidly identified and dealt with) but doesn't scale to "the entire population" (or even a tiny fraction thereof)

Incidentally, a number of miscarriages of justice have involved the withholding/tampering of DNA evidence which shows the person charged couldn't possibly be the actual perpetrator and Law enforcement keeps getting away with it because there aren't sufficient criminal/civil penalties (ie: against the perpetrating department and the person who "the buck stops here" with in them - Even worse, if such laws are passed there will be even bigger coverups and more people willing to go to extremes to avoid jail time for egrarious misbehaviour)

Re: Analogue audio jack

for slightly more than next to nothing you can get them with speakers too (in some cases USB speakers are cheaper than the dongles)

Re: Its integration thats the killer

On the other hand, I've had a bunch of instances where managers insist on using shitty home-grown software to inplement (badly) what the external software already has built in because "we don't want to be totally dependent on that package" (result: man years wasted and the job still not being done properly by the internal stuff)

It's worth talking to the accountants anyway - they have FAR more power than the average C-level staff, let alone lower managers or HR

Once they understand the ramifications of XYZ decisions it's a lot easier to block stupid purchases and get critical ones through

Ready and fully documented, along with the rejections - for when one of the people whose heads are on the line attempts to toss you under a bus

Re: As AI use continues to grow, the race to find alternative ways to power datacenters accelerates

"In Europe we have a problem with increasingly long lived populations who want unfunded pensions to pay out from unduly early ages"

The problem with the implicit assumption that these people should be working is that there are enough jobs to go around.

"Full employment" went away a very long time ago - as evidenced by the disappearance of child labor and sweatshops (Social protests have never managed to shut down ANYTHING that was profitable. It's only when the economics are marginal that they can suceed)

Re: As AI use continues to grow, the race to find alternative ways to power datacenters accelerates

"As domestic users of energy we're being expected to invest heavily in energy saving measures, better insulation, different heating technology, alternative fueled vehicles."

For the moment.

A nuclear fission (molten salt) system has the potential to reduce build/operating costs by around 80% (in addition to all the other advantages) and that kind of cost reduction would make it cheaper than EVERYTHING else (Current water-moderated uranium nuclear started off more expensive than coal and has only become more expensive - it really only existed as a way of justifying the uranium separation process and was pushed for military ends (Whilst we refer to uranium enrichment, _depleted_ uranium is the precursor material to weapons plutonium production. the concentration on enrichment and "weaponisation of civil power" is a classic distraction technique from the REAL weaponisation paths)

Re: Where from?

Hydrogen manometers have negligable pressure in them and they were being constantly topped up

Modern reticulated gas systems are operating at substantial pressures in the distribution network and even in street mains, with pressure reduction to a 2-3psi (or less) just before the residential meter - which is why you don't see pressure dropoff when everyone fires up their central heating, (such dropoffs were a regular feature of the old days of town gas)

Re: Where from?

White hydrogen is generally mixed with a lot of other noxious gasses and geological predictions are that it's _rare_

Relying that as a future fuel source is unwise

Re: Where from?

"hydrogen is more difficult to light than methane"

wtf are you smoking?

The explosive range in air of methane is 5-17% (LEL-UEL)

The explosive range in air of hydrogen is 4-75% - and it requires a MUCH lower ignition energy source (you can set it off with a red-hot object. Methane needs a spark)

(The minimum ignition energy (MIE) of a hydrogen–air mixture is only 0.019 mJ, whereas that of other flammable gases such as petrol, methane, ethane, propane, butane, and benzene is usually on the order of 0.1 mJ according to Lewis and von Elbe)

Hydrogen NOW is hideously expensive and it's extracted from hydrocarbons.

Green hydrogen would need oil to be well past $250/bbl to be viable - and only if the input energy can't be used in other more efficient ways (which is highly unlikely)

In short: Hydrogen is a classic example of "Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD"

"until we develop a source of large scale, ultra low cost electricity. There are no candidates of which I'm aware."

TMSR-LF1 - look it up (It's a rebuild of ORNL MSRE but started on thorium from the outset)

If it work as expected there's a good chance that renewables farms might end up being largely abandoned as far too expensive to operate (in addition to not being remotely capable of meeting the generation requirements for full decarbonisation)

Re: Capacity

There's even less once the outside plates start icing up (ice is a very effective insulator)

Re: Capacity

"And whilst less likely to create explosive atmospheres"

The flammable range of methane in air is 5-15%

The flammable range of hydrogen in air is 4-75% (explosive detonation between 18-60% - methane doesn't have a supersonic mode and can't detonate)

On top of that, methane needs 0.4-6.8mJ of energy to initiate a reaction (ie: a decent spark), whilst hydrogen only needs 0.019-0.1mJ (something red hot, or simply taking off a jumper)

I get that hydrogen is lighter and more likely to escape but in reality enough will hang around in a room if there's a leak for everyone in the vicinity to have a VERY bad day

Oh - and you can't use odorants like mercapton - that works because it's almost the same molecular weight as methane and as such tends to go much the same places methane does

Re: Capacity

Town gas was made "as-needed" and was distributed at _very_ low pressures (far lower than modern gas systems, which is why the regulators are needed)

If the gasworks ever shuts down for more than a day or so (I lived in a town where that happened thanks to a gasometer collapsing), gas stopped working shortly afterwards

During peak demand periods it wasn't uncommon for street pipe pressure to fall so low it became difficult to light anything

Re: Capacity

with safer nuclear that doesn't risk spewing radioactive steam (and other stuff) over the countryside, they can be sited much closer to populated areas and the waste heat used for district heating schemes

Re: Electricity for heat pumps

The ONE advantage of kicking the can is that MSR-thorium liquid fuelled designs now appear practical (modulo development work in China), can be built on a modular basis in normal factories (no stupidly large pressure containment vessels/Building required) and are small enough to replace burners in existing coal/gas thermal plants

Existing nuclear only runs at 280C or thereabouts (AGRs are hotter but not much hotter). MSRs run hot enough (600-800C) to produce supercritical steam and don't need to use rivers/estuaries as heatsinks, so they're more immune to heatwave-induce shutdowns

Re: Electricity for heat pumps

Consider this: Take whatever number of 1GW power stations exist today and TRIPLE it (if not Sextuple).

That's the number of nuclear plants which are needed to decarbonise

Renewables can only match existing power generation capacity and piussing around spending trillions on a vapourware interconnect from Morocco which can only supply 7% of current needs is going to look even more stupid when it's more like 1.5% of future needs

Re: Electricity for heat pumps

It will do.

Uranium fuelled reactors of any kind are more expensive than coal and water moderation makes them more expensive still on the thermal side (wet steam)

There are sound commercial reasons why no nuclear plant has been planned for purely commercial reasons since the mid 1960s (France's ones were to mask the nuclear weapons program, as were the British AGRs. Japan's ones are for energy independence/pollution reduction)

Alvin Weinberg made a "Mark Two" design in the 1960s and was driven out of the nulcear industry as a result. The Chinese have just finished rebuilding what was abandoned at Oak Ridge in 1969 and picked up where Weinberg's team left off - running on thorium (the first molten salt reactor to ever do so and the only molten salt liquid-fuelled reactor currently running). Other countries are playing catchup and the British efforts look like very typical Heath Robinson lashups of "old designs with new features" that Weinberg rejected in 1963 for operational safety reasons.

Re: Electricity for heat pumps

"import nuclear from France"

There is a grand total of 5GW of interconnect between Britain and mainland Europe, with another 1.5GW from Norway

The "underwater link from Morocco" is unlikely to happen. Energy losses would be _staggering_ and if it was practical, the Spain/Morocco one would be a lot bigger than 700MW

The most promising future source is nuclear - TMSR-LF1 is where we should be keeping a weather eye (a nod to dear departed Lester is in order)

"I have seen multi-million pound businesses with a bunch of "critical" spreadsheets that have a 20-year legacy in them"

I'll see your "multi-million pound" and raise it to "multi-BILLION pound"

Re: This is not an IT failing

"System is working exactly as designed"

Re: This is not an IT failing

> ... "Pushing down costs" through competition...

...Is the ethos which resulted in the German Post Office of the 1930s having a weapons research division (amongst other absurdities)

The mindset of eternal struggle comes from "social darwinism". It's never ended well for those involved (and we should be thankful for that)

Re: This is not an IT failing

It's not just the RHAs and NHS trusts.

The same happens in Police, Fire, schools and other critical services which made sense as county organisations once upon a time but fail badly in an environment of mobile populations

Attempts to unify services have been met by determined resistance from higher ups who see national level organisation as usurping their authority (or interfering with their gravy train)

The same thing applied in British Rail. For at least 20 years after nationalisation what "BR" was still run under the same "Big five" and smaller railway company managements who saw each other as the enemy (Which is why the Central line got poleaxed). Leland was similar. What was _actually needed was a ruthless cull of _upper_ manglement so that the people making money (the people building products to sell) could get on with their jobs unmolested ("Union Strife" only happens when managment has already gone to pot. Happy workers don't tolerate militant union leaders)

Re: This is not an IT failing

Such contracts should also prohibit the shifting of goalposts partway through

This is the single largest problem with such contracts - it's not that the contractors can't deliver, but that they're aiming for a moving target

Something I was involved in many years ago had the CEO decide he knew more than the rest of industry - so he drew up a design for a system which _3_ contractors refused to bid on because it wouldn't work as designed (it didn't help that he insisted on running it on Windows) and they didn't want their reputations damaged.

The 4th contractor said "sure, we'll do it" (for 20% more than he'd told the board) and rolled it out _exactly_ as designed - on time and under budget.

However, the first 3 contractors were correct. It _didn't_ work as designed.

Budget blew out by a factor of 20 and the company reacted to mounting criticism and attention by taking legal action against those who outed his use of legal threats to gag people, with the backing of the BoD

In the end he was fired, the BoD ousted and the (still broken) software replaced by an existing opensource package which cost less than 20% of the original design cost and worked first time. The company was sold off less than 2 years later

sociopathy is a leading trait in surgeons, It may well be a liability in a GP (Shipman springs to mind)

Re: The UK can no longer afford nor staff a viable health service.

If it can't afford to run a viable government operated health serrvice it sure as hell can't afford to run a privatised one where the emphasis is on PROFIT, not health

There's a reason the NHS was created - the USA model was what prevailed pre WW2, followed by "charities" operating healthcare systems which weren't much better

Re: "The NHS suffers from a chronic shortage of anesthetists"

"more of missing the 'this is a drill' parts, but noticing the 'this is not a drill' parts that followed"

How hard is it to have a transparent overlay saying "this is a drill" ?

Re: "The NHS suffers from a chronic shortage of anesthetists"

On some menus I've seen it given a blank space either side...

Re: "all GP practices have changed to appointment booking solely via an online portal"

"This is clearly discriminatory against the old, or other people who do not use the Internet"

Even if you DO use the Internet, if you're blind it's utterly unisable - and the amount of 3rd party javascript gives pause for thought

The ICO really needs to have a dedicated team for GDPR-breaching public/large utility websites

Re: "The NHS suffers from a chronic shortage of anesthetists"

That, and the toxicity of manglement structures causing burnout (not just IT staff - NHS medical staff are even more badly affected)

As mentioned upthread, the "new NHS portal" is a shining example of "how not to do things" and a big step backwards over the previous ones used (like SystemOne, which was awful, but the NHS one has taken it to new depths)

Re: Excel for dodgy databases

Joke or not, it's still vastly better (and safer, and gives more reliable answers) than doing anything complex on Excel

Re: Excel for dodgy databases

"I found a couple incorrect formulas that inflated the project cost by a quarter million"

Which means there's that much padding in the outcome and people get congratulated for coming in on time and under budget

It's vastly worse when they give a figure that's wrong in the other direction

It's inadvisable to exceed 65C in most cases (fumes) although softening is a problem for both PVC and Polyethelene at 80C, ABS is rated to 105C but I've encountered warped boxes which supposedly didn't get hotter than 80, so hotspots must factor into it

Re: Fun with magnets.

I've seen monochrome monitors with magnetised frames which needed degaussing