* Posts by I ain't Spartacus

10123 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009

EU's decision on UK data adequacy set to become 'political football' in broader Brexit negotiations

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Re: Fail

As opposed to the Register, as the OP made clear. I broadly agree with him. I pretty much automatically trusted the Guardian on facts up until the new editor took over a few years ago. At this point I'd have to double check - because they've become much more of a campaigning organisation and much less of a newspaper.

I'm on the centre right in politics, so I don't often agree with the Graun. But it used to provide good reliable news and often thoughtful comment. And I read it to so I could learn. Nowadays I think it's just as much part of the depressing "culture wars" as the Mail or the Telegraph.

I still trust the Beeb, because they make an effort to check their facts. Rather than just printing any old report produced by a campaign group because they agree with the point it's making - and who gives a damn if the stats are basically made up.

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Crypto exchange cracked, Bitcoin burgled

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Re: "new payment players [..] not allowed anywhere near its innermost workings"

Def,

And how would you know which wallet software to trust?

But even assuming that the world of crypto wallets isn't as riddled with insecurities and fraud as the world of crypto currency exchanges - how would you get any Crapto-Coins to put in your wallet? You either need to earn some money in them - or you need to go to an exchange to buy them with your credit card/bank account/cash.

At which point you're at risk of being defrauded by the exchange.

The alternative being you earn some crapto-coins - then how do you turn them into actual cash with which you can pay your rent/mortage or buy beer. You need an exchange...

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Re: banks are robbed on an almost daily basis

Chris G,

It's true. But not really the banks being robbed, it's the users. And tends to be in small amounts - because they can only take what the users have in their accounts. Or at least it's a mix of the users being tricked into giving away their credentials and/or security failures on the part of the banks.

Although saying that, someone above asked for an example of an actually significant sized digital bank raid - well they do happen.

About a billion dollars from the Bangladeshi Central Bank's US account. I'd thought it was last year, but a quick search tells me it was 2016. Doesn't time fly once you've got old...

Lazy link to Wiki

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Re: Cash is king

Andy the Hat,

It can still be done. I don't think the people who stole that money from the Bangladeshi central bank last year have been caught, or even identified. But there are massive differences.

If Lloyds lost $130m they'd simply make smaller profits in most years. They also have a capital reserve, of assets owned by the bank itself, which could be deployed to cover the losses. They're also regulated - so there would be independent investigation of the screw-up.

And they operate in a financial system that has controls designed to help facilitate tracing money that's gone astray. Even if there are also people within that system designing systems to make things opaque again, for the purposes of avoiding scrutiny/tax/whatever.

Whereas many fans of Bitcoin seem to see regulation as a bad thing.

Actually this does have one unique feature. We're all used to the initial statement from the hacked exchange to tell us it's all under control, only the hot wallets were stolen ($130m is a stupidly high amount for a hot wallet - I bet that's hundreds of times more than their total daily transactions) - and they've got the reserves to cover it. Only for them to shut down all services for a week to "investigate" (Lloyds would probably be up-and-running the same day) - and then shamefacedly admit in a month or so that all/more of their money is lost and they promise to pay everyone back. And then cease to exist a month after that...

But the unusual thing is that they claim they had cooperation from other exchanges to try to trace transactions and freeze them. If true, that's an interesting change. And suggests that maybe regulation will come to crypto currency. The problem is that while the self-interest of the criminal users outweighs that of the legitimate users - crytocoin will always be a jungle. If the legit users outweigh the crims, then eventually they'll get tired of having their stuff stolen, and will do something about it. Assuming they don't all vote with their feet first.

Ethernet failure on Swiss business jet prompted emergency descent, say aviation safety bods

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Happy

Re: When that Ethernet network degrades or fails, things can become unpredictable.

People have raised some issues with my sensible suggestion about IP over pigeon. But I think they've neglected a few factors.

Firstly most data is transmitted from cockpit to the planes control surfaces. Well if the plane is doing say 400kts then the pigeons simply need to leave the cockpit and wait for a second or two, and the tail elevator or wing slats will reach them with hardly any effort required at all. I suppose a harsh person might suggest that this is only a form of broadcasting, rather than networking.

But I would argue that the energy saving on the trip down-plane, would leave them fit for the much less important trips back up-plane - back to the cockpit with any required sensor data.

Chickens can climb ladders in order to get into their coops. This being a basic anti-fox defence. Well I don't see why pigeons couldn't manage the same feat. Then you'd simply need to install a few so they could get into the passenger or baggage cabin and then flying up-plane would be simple.

Plus we now have various relightable solid rocket boosters available, should they require a quick burst of speed - such as if they need to communicate an engine fire. But in the main I think we should encourage a slower pace of life - and I'm sure the pilots will discover if the undercarriage has deployed or not once they put the plane on the runway.

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Happy

Re: When that Ethernet network degrades or fails, things can become unpredictable.

What's wrong with ethernet over carrier pigeon?

And now for something completely different: Ultraviolet aurora spotted around comet for first time

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Are they sure?

I'm sure scientists do their best and all that. But is this actually caused by the solar wind?

Perhaps it's just an aura of smugness about having eaten one of the puny humans' probes while also preventing the other from detecting the engines and weapons pods.

Proposed US fix for Boeing 737 Max software woes does not address Ethiopian crash scenario, UK pilot union warns

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Just make the economy passengers row/pedal faster. If that doesn't work, equip the cabin crew with whips.

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Why not have a motor?

In fact there is a motor. It's just that Boeing have put MCAS and the motor on the same breaker switches, so you can either have motor and computer-that-tries-to-kill-you or neither and have to do it by hand.

I thought I'd read in El Reg that one of the solutions Boeing and the FAA were looking at was a change to the controls system to allow MCAS to be killed and still have electronic control of the trim. Which would have saved the Ethiopia plane - because as I recall they even re-enabled MCAS in order to try and get the trim motor to do some of the work before MCAS could push the trim all the way forward again. But couldn't manage to override it and had to switch it off again.

Tesla to build cars made of batteries and hit $25k price tag about three years down the road

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Re: The year of fully autonomous Tesla is just after the year of the Linux desktop

I think you'll find the paperless office is first in that queue.

Not sure where reliable fusion power comes into the list though.

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Re: Structural Batteries?!

Anon,

I can't be the only person who thinks they haven't thought this absolutely terrible idea entirely through?

They have seemingly thought about it at least a bit. Your point is invalid anyway, seeing as they're not proposing to put any more batteries on the car, just to move them around a bit - so it stays exactly as flammable as it already was/is.

Actually of course, they probably will end up putting more batteries in. Because when you save weight you're going to be tempted to increase range by adding more. But that's only adding a bit of extra fuel to an already flammable system - so isn't really increasing the risk. With good engineering they should be able to create a system that is actually stronger than their current battery containment while saving weight.

The potential issues are much more about replaceability and lifetime of the batteries.

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Re: Applefying the car

A ding to a wing can cost up to $6000 US to repair. A ding to a wing and a door and the insurance companies may well declare the $25K car a right-off. Again not good for sustainability.

I'm guessing they're talking about replacing the chassis with batteries, not the outside panels. In a similar way that many racing cars started using the engine block as a structural compenent of the whole car in the late 60s / early 70s. If I recall correctly it was Lotus that did it first in F1.

So I imagine you'd have a chassis and floorpan that were hollow and contained battery cells - possibly including large structural bits like the pillars. Then hung off these you'd have the crumple-zones, doors and other panels.

Making the outer panels out of battery makes no sense, as these are currently very thin anyway - but often the chassis made of hollow metal tube, so why not fill it with stuff?

Obviously it's going to limit the life of the car - but if they're conservative with the battery management and have spare cells to cover for putting knackered ones offline - you should be able to get a decent lifetime out of the car.

Ancient telly borked broadband for entire Welsh village

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Facepalm

Oh noes! Flower? Flour. Bugger!

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Headmaster

Spelt!

What's low gluten flower got to do with this discussion? I suppose that does go in one's bellie, if eaten while watching tellie and wearing one wellie...

I've just looked it up though, to confirm what I suspected. I've never liked the sound of spelt - although I'm fine with dealt - I prefer the sound of spelled. As with so many Americanisms - spelled is actually perfectly valid in english. Similarly if you look in your OED you'll find that specialised and specialized are both correct. The same being true for spelled and spelt.

As with so many of these things, english changed in the intervening years in ways that just didn't catch on in the USA. But the US usage was often standard back in Shakespeare's time. Some of this is just the natural evolution of language, and some of it is the Victorians creating rules, either in order to try to make the language conform to rules (fat chance!) - or so they could have people to look down on. The split infinitive is an example of one of these Victorian inventions, that is mostly best ignored.

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Happy

Re: Ha!

So what. I have a Spectrum 48k.

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No. He's right. It's telly. Spelled like Kelly.

Future airliners will run on hydrogen, vows Airbus as it teases world-plus-dog with concept designs

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Re: Bring it back

Martin Gregorie,

I disagree. Whilst horses are impractical for pulling normal aircraft due to the high speeds - they seem perfectly suited to the lower speed, more environmentally sympathetic Zeppelins. Plus, if we're going to re-indtroduce airship travel, then I feel that steampunk is the way to go in terms of styling and uniforms. This should give lots of nice design opportunities for aeronautical horse tack - and some tasteful souvenir items to be sold in the inevitable gift shop. An important consideration in any travel strategy, I'm sure you will agree.

This also removes weight from the Zeppelin, as it will no longer require either engines or fuel - thus freeing up a lot of carrying capacity for extra passengers.

I feel that international air travel might be better suited to the fitting of onboard gyms - in order for richer passengers to help power the aircraft, and reduce fuel use, as part of their regular work-out strategies. Although downgrading economy class passengers to the status of galley slaves is also an attractive option.

Finally, to add to your interesting observations on the problems of horse feeding requirements, I would like to add some useful information of my own. The average horse produces 0.5L of urine a day and around 7-15kg of manure.

In 1900 New York had about 100,000 working horses - which equates to 1,100 tonnes of poo and 50,000L of wee per day.

Although this needn't be all bad. For example, New Yorkers could have filled 7 Olympic swimming pools per year with horse urine, just from their working population of horses alone. And their roses must have been spectacular...

However on the downside, the average working horse only lasted about 3 years, which means a staggering 30,000 horse carcasses per year to deal with. I think we can all agree, that's a lot of lasagne.

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Happy

Re: hydrogen engines?

It's a solved problem. One standard of filling/pressurisation was preffered by the porn industry. And once they adopt a standard it becomes dominant across the industry relatively quickly...

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Re: Looks good to me

When humidity gets up to 100% this water stuff will be falling out of the sky across great swathes of the earth, how will we cope with all the water pollution!

If SO2 pollution in the atmosphere causes acid rain - we're going to need a new name for H2O pollution being washed out of the atmosphere.

I suggest solvent rain. As the rain has been polluted by large amounts of solvent and could therefore do serious damage to natural rock formations - particularly around rivers.

Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid mechanical keyboard: Weird, powerful, comfortable ... and did we mention weird?

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I don't know how anyone can live without a number pad. But then I've probably spent too much of my working life doing either calculations or the accounts.

Top 5 billionaires find that global pandemics are good for business – and their wallets

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Megaphone

They've even started the figure in the fucking middle of a month - in order to ignore the fact that the markets tumbled in the first 21/2 months of this year and then started going up again as a result of some combination optimism for the future and QE.

Nobody who does that should be taken seriously. I'm well prepared to believe proper figures to say that companies involved in tech, cloud and online sales (like Amazon, Zoom etc.) have done really well. And those that have founders who own large chunks of the stock are going to mean those founders getting big additions to their paper fortunes. Not that they can sell without tanking the stock-price. But these figures quote in the article are bollocks of the highest order! And you'd expect a bit better from El Reg - i.e. even some basic attempt to look at what the numbers are saying and how they've been so obviously and deliberately distorted.

iOS 14 suffers app preference amnesia: Rebooting an iThing resets browser, email client defaults back to Safari, Mail

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Re: Ha ha ha...

What Huawei do is create their apps with the most similar short name and logo to the Google equivalent they can manage - put all theirs on the front page and hide all Google's in a folder on a different screen - and hope that you don't notice and use all their apps for preference.

It was the one sour note of setting up an otherwise nice new phone.

Perhaps it was prep for the new Trumptastic rules banning them from selling gear with the Play Store...

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Facepalm

Experience suggests...

Who wants to bet this iOS upgrade will also turn Bluetooth back on - despite me having disabled it?

As we stand on the precipice of science fiction into science fact, people say: Hell yeah, I want to augment my eyesight!

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Facepalm

Re: Pedant Alert

Today, mine's been running Windows ME.

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Devil

Re: Pull my finger!

What happens when Wolverine decides to bash the bishop?

Is that why he's so perpetually angry?

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Coat

Re: cybrog.

Out from under this bridge! Or I shall plunge you into the abyss of moderation. Then fall! Spawn of 4Chan! Fall!

...Fly you foools...

[Mine's the anorak with the certain book in the pocket]

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Happy

Re: Pedant Alert

Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.

But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.

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Re: "testing the limits of what's possible"

Pascal Monett,

There are hearing aids implanted in the ear. They're called cochlear implants, and have been around for a couple of decades now.

There have been several experimental eye implants as well, I remember reading about one guy who went from total blindness to monochrom vision at a resolution of something quite a lot less than VGA. But I've not seen much about it since. Maybe they're still trying to find enough Matrox Millenium cards on eBay?

In principal I could imagine an implant that would pump glycogen directly into your muscles - which wouldn't give you more strength - but would give you more endurance - so you could say sprint over longer distances.

But the standard medical implants are things like insulin pumps, pacemakers and the like.

Though in the more science fiction realms - some artificial limbs are now radio operated. Because the nerves in the amputation site tend to be damaged as well - it's much harder to make a standard operation that utilises them. So instead you chop some nerves that don't do much around the side of the ribs and implant a radio transmitter that they can control. Then do excercises to retrain the brain to use those to control arm muscles instaead, then have a radio controlled robot arm.

Or there's a Parkinson's Disease thing where you have electrodes into the relevant bits of the brain. Feed current in from an external battery pack and hey presto! Full muscle control. Watching a guy on telly switch that box on and off again 15 years ago totally blew my mind.

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Happy

Interestingly with the blades that paralympic sprinters use - there's already controversy about augmentation. The longer your blades, the bouncier they are, the longer the stride-length, the faster you're likely to be able to go.

So say I lose my legs in a car accident. I've got a known height, strap on appropriate sized blades, Bob's your uncle, go off and sprint. What if I lie about my pre-injury height? Is there reliable data to check?

What if I was born without legs - so an original height can't be known?

Hence there are all sorts of rules comparing to arm span, which is usually similar to height - and trying to come up with reasonable compromises and approximations.

The Battle of Britain couldn't have been won without UK's homegrown tech innovations

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Re: Will you kindly stop with the "Britain alone" myth?

Man inna barrel,

Don't read Mein Kampf. Life's too short. Read Kershaw's book on Hitler instead, if you feel the need. Or Joachim Fest's.

One thing you've got to admire about Hitler, he used to have black forrest gateau for breakfast...

Some of the extreme racism was a product of its time. There was quite a lot of mainstream "science" in the 19th and early 20th Century that was trying to prove some kind of racial superiority. And that was one of the enabling factors. Hitler was also a bit of conspiracy loon - something that seems to be increasingly in fashion now. In his case it may have been a product of his various failures in his early life - or just the way his brain was wired.

But maybe it's also a function of always playing the victim card? Rather than saying I failed as an artist because I'm not actually that talented, why not blame a Jewish conspiracy. Or rather than saying that Germany got punished by Versailles for starting a massive destructive war and then refusing to make peace even though winning was looking increasingly (and bloodily) unlikely - you could complain about all its enemies being unfair and nasty. And rather than admitting Germany lost said massive war, why not blame the jews and the communists for "stabbing us in the back"? The conspiracy theories are much less painful - and require much less self-examination.

To go from there's a jewish / Bolshevik conspiracy to let's kill all the jews and communists in Europe is far beyond what my mind can comprehend - and no amount of reading on the subject seems to help me there. But then I struggle with the idea of casually accepting slavery as a normal thing - and yet humanity has practised slavery pretty uncontroversially for thousands of years. In Rome you could be a slave yourself and yet own property, including other slaves. Humans are weird.

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Re: Will you kindly stop with the "Britain alone" myth?

Man inna barrel,

Hitler may not have been rational. But his plan was always to conquer Russia and get living space in the east. It's not like he hid it, it's plain to read in Mein Kampf. Or as plain to read as anything is in that book, which is a mess - and not the easiest thing you'll ever read.

He doesn't seem to have had anything against Britain. France had to be punished, and then it was off to conquer the "sub-human" slavs and build a thousand-year empire for Germany. At which point he retired to his private art gallery / model city of Linz, turned Berlin into some insane giant concrete nightmare and lived happily ever after.

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Re: you could read that two ways...

Ignoring the Soviets, where the T34 was closer to parity with German tanks. US and British ones were simply not as good. But they were easier to maintain - and the western allies had a proper logistics program to fix them when they were broken. Plus there were just more of them. And I mean a lot more.

Churchill gives figures in his book, that are out of date given modern research but good enough. Germany produced something like 27,000 tanks of various types throughout the war. Britain only built about half that, but the US built another 50,000 and the Soviets another 100,000.

The difference was even starker with aircraft. Britain alone overtook German aircraft production early in 1940. By 1941, British production was double that of Germany. And then the Americans started producing insane numbers of the things.

A final oddity was that Britain finally got it right with tanks in 1945/46. At which point we produced the Centurion - which from what I've read was the best tank of its generation, and its replacement the Chieftain probably had a decent claim to that title too. Bit late chaps!

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Re: Jingoistic Juices are flowing

If you played on London bombsites, then you were part of "The Bulge". "Boomers" were nearly unknown until Trivial Pursit, Boomer Edition crossed the Atlantic

Are you sure? I was born in the early 70s, and I pretty much always remember the phrase "baby boom" being used from the 80s onwards. And I was an unusual kid, in that I was listening to the Today Program on Radio 4 at the age of 12 - I've been fascinated by politics since.

I had a very nice twin casette deck with radio in bright yellow (proper 80s!), with chunky black rocker switches, on my Captain's bunk (again very 80s). And I used to wake up to Radio 4's Today with Brian Readhead. 30 minutes of news and comment with 2 1/2 hours of time-checks and trailers...

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Re: Jingoistic Juices are flowing

Man inna barrel

The Germans being "ill-prepared and making it up as they go along". That is news to me, They were fucking unstoppable in the early stages of WW2.

The above directly contradicts this:

and fighting on too many fronts: e.g. Russia and Africa.

If you read Eric von Manstein's book, 'Lost Victories' - he's very clear about the lack of strategic direction. And it wasn't just down to Hitler being useless - it was also structural. The Germans (Prussians at the time actually) had invented the modern General Staff in the 19th Century. This not only meant formal training for staff officers and therefore much better staff work, but also involved proper peacetime planning and wargaming.

However they didn't go to the next step when they got involved in WWI. The army, navy and airforce commands were separate, and remained so. There was no overall body in charge of strategic direction, such as the Imperial General Staff in Britain. They were all under the nominal command of the Kaiser, and later the President.

When Hitler created OKW (Oberkomando der Wermacht) they weren't really there as an equivalent of an overall joint service body - because Goering was running the Luftwaffe and wasn't going to be told what to do. The Kriegsmarine pretty much ploughed it's own furrough as well. Plus Hitler's leadership style was to set up lots of rival power centres and get them all to compete to please him, not to cooperate with each other.

In effect OKW were Hitler's lapdogs because he could never fully control the leadership of the army. Hence, later in the war you got the bizarre situation that OKW (Oberkommando der Heeres - army HQ) was only really in charge of the army on the Eastern Front and OKW was commanding the army in France facing the Allied invasion - but not even in command of the navy or airforce in France - despite being in nominal charge of all Germany's armed forces.

Leaving the structural problems - you also have the strategic ones. This is partly because Hitler wasn't telling people his long-term plans in advance, so they couldn't be prepped for. But also because Germany wasn't planning to start a war until at least 1941 - some of the Navy's plans were assuming no war before 1944. Hitler had convinced himself that France and Britain would violate their guarantees to Poland, despite the fact that they specifically made them because of not having given them to Czechoslovakia before Munich.

Also Germany didn't have the tanks to invade France in 1939. Hence they chose to take on Poland first and give themselves time to build more and finish the training of more panzer divisions. The plan for the invasion of France, Belgium and Holland was only made in Winter 1939. The army wanted to do soemthing like WWI, it was junior generals like Guderian who persuaded Hitler to overrule them and go for a tank breakthrough on the junction between the French defences and the allied units advancing into Belgium.

There was no plan for the invasion of Norway, that was done at the last minute and bodged. The Germans managed to bodge better/faster, than the Allies, hence they won, but the Kriegsmarine lost about a third of its destroyer force in the process.

There was also no plan for the invasion of Britain. They didn't start serious invasion planning until after defeating France. Because they didn't expect to beat France that quickly - but also because they didn't really have the resources to do it properly anyway.

Basically what happened is that Hitler gambled continuously, always upping the stakes, and from 1936-1941 always rolled 6s. They continually got lucky in close-run things, until they didn't.

If the Nazis had been led by a sane dictator, we would all be Nazis now

If you're sane, you're unlikely to try and conquer the world. But also I don't see how the Germans could have successfully invaded Britain. Even a victory in the Battle of Britain only made an invasion marginally possible - there would have still been a viable RAF in the Midlands and North - and the German invasion forces would have been eventually cut off from supply and destroyed. Not only did the Royal Navy have ships to destroy the invasion fleet, admittedly at heavy casualties from the Luftwaffe, but was also had loads of submarines - that would have turned the Channel into a deathtrap for German supply ships. Particularly as the Germans didn't have the anti-sumbarine technology to match the Royal Navy's either.

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Re: Technological edges

The Bf109, Spitfire and Hurricane were all similar in ability. Each had advantages and disadvantages. The Germans had cannon, which was probably their biggest plus - something the RAF didn't get in numbers until later.

If you read about the air war in Europe advantage would swinging around wildly for the next couple of years. Both sides would make a new version of their plane, chuck it into service and give the enemy a nasty surprise when it could suddenly do things they'd learned weren't possible.

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Re: Ironic Obit

Actually that freedom of the seas patrol in the Pacific was a cunning wheeze to borrow a couple of squadrons of US Marine aircraft.

The plan was to have 2 RAF squadrons fully operational at that point, and then to borrow some Marines to do joint excercises / training. Seeing as they've been using the aircraft in carrier operations for longer, that's some good operational experience to be shared. Meanwhile we do them a favour in the Pacific, which is also good for our relations with Japan and Australia who have also been doing freedom-of-the-seas patrols in the South China Sea for the last year or so.

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Re: Will you kindly stop with the "Britain alone" myth?

batfink,

Tis true of course. And it's not like the Dominions were forced into it. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa got consulted as to whether they wanted to join the war. Although it should be pointed out that they were a lot further away that Britain.

Also the largest volunteer army in history is the Indian Army of WWII.

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Happy

Re: you could read that two ways...

The Finns had ski-bicycle battalions! I like to imagine them pedalling furiously with their skis occasionally getting caught in the spokes of their wheels, or on railings by the side of the road. But I'm guessing that they actually took them off while cycling, and then strapped the bikes to their backs when skiing. Spoilsports!

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Re: you could read that two ways...

Hairy Spod,

Not investing in jets was a deliberate choice. Which probably turned out to be correct. It's possible that we could have had good numbers of jets much earlier in the war, but it's also possible that the R&D wouldn't have borne fruit in time and that useful resources would have been wasted on having the best technology rather than tech that was good enough.

The RAF chose to concentrate on what was working now or what would be working soon. Churchill did the same at the Admiralty in 1939, where he cut a whole bunch of ships that were building, but wouldn't be ready until 1943-44 in order to concentrate on bashing out loads of cheap escort ships that could be at sea within 6 months to a year.

Both choices were almost certainly the correct ones. Germany never got serious numbers of Me262s deployed - and the ones they did needed an engine rebuild every 10 hours! Else the engines exploded - which can really ruin your day.

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Re: Jingoistic Juices are flowing

Oh, one last point. Britain had been rapidly re-arming by the late 30s. Those countries that re-armed later often ended up being at an advantage - as technology was changing so fast that what was cutting edge in 1934 was obsolescent in 1937 and a death-trap by 1939. Not so much at sea, but in the air and in mechanised warfare.

Britain had been busily building a bunch of aircraft factories. So by 1940 we were actually out-producing the Germans in numbers of planes every month. Something that Luftwaffe intel missed.

We also had a working and well-organised spares logistics system. The Germans could only do light repairs at the airfields, and so had to send planes back to the factory for major works. Which made the factories less efficient and meant they were often short of planes at the squadron (staffel) level. Whereas the RAF had new or repaired planes ready for pilots the next day. This was a problem that continued throughout the war, and the Germans would often have loads of unserviceable planes lying about their airfields waiting to be shipped back to the factories for repairs that would be done locally by the RAF ground crews.

Our shortage was pilots. This also gets to the main intelligence failure of the battle.

An RAF fighter squadron fought with a strength of 12 planes in the air. But actually should have about 20 planes and pilots on the books. This meant that barring a horrible day, it should still be able to field a full strength sqadron at 5pm - even if it had been up two or three times in the day. They were regularly sent up North for rests and re-training and got replacement pilots (sometimes) and planes and spares regularly.

A Luftwaffe staffel had a fighting strength of 9, but should have about 20 pilots and say 14 aircraft. They weren't getting many replacement pilots or spares or planes. And certainly not on a regular basis. So more-and-more ended up fighting under strength.

Worse, German intelligence assumed that the RAF were the same. The number of squadrons was known - so they simply multiplied that by 14, and took away their pilots claims of shot down enemy planes to work out that the RAF would be out of planes and pilots if they just attacked for a few more days. Of course, they couldn't count the wrecks, which the RAF leadership could, so they couldn't work out how much their pilots were exaggerating their numbers of kills. If one poor sod gets hit by 4 different pilots, that's one kill, not 4. And that's before you factor in wishful thinking and young men being boastful. The Germans claimed to have shot down a third of Fighter Command's entire strength on one day in August!

The British mistake was the opposite. We counted the number of Luftwaffe squadrons and multiplied by 20 to get their numnber of planes. So they underestimated the RAF's strength by about a third and the RAF overestimated theirs by about the same. This made the RAF too worried and the Germans complacent. Having Goering in command didn't help. He'd been a good fighter pilot in WWI, but I don't think he was up on the modern technology and tactics and he was a lazy, boasful, arrogant arse as a commander. Fortunately. I can't remember if he was on the opium at this point in the war, or whether that was later. That didn't help his abilities as a commander, either...

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Re: Jingoistic Juices are flowing

EvilDrSmith,

Go to the Battle of Britain Bunker and museum in Uxbridge. You get a tour of the bunker where Fighter Group 11 was commanded from - and it's an eye-opening experience.

Having read a bit about it (mostly in more general histories of the war), it wasn't until I went there that I realised quite how extraordinary Dowding's system was. It was a massive network designed to populate one map (plus backups) with all the information needed to allow one person to process all the information to make effective decisions. And then to issue orders back down the chain to be carried out. It's a robust system designed to route round damage and with several backup sensor systems integrated to give the most accurate possible info.

When I say huge, we're talking something like 12,000 people in the Observer Corps posts, scattered round the country phoning in height, direction and speed of raids. They worked as a backup if radar failed - and also to give info on raids once past the radar picket. Also integrated was of course radar and radio direction finding. There's also a section of the control room for the anti-aircraft command, so they can know where to expect attacks and where to expect RAF planes, to avoid shooting at them.

So everyone passes info up the chain to these few HQs, who then make decisions and send them out again for the local command at sector, airfield and squadron to deal with.

it's a massive analogue network, I think they had 200 people on the telephone switchboards in the bunker. Here's a nice link to a piece with pictures.

It's a fascinating system that merits an El Reg article, given this is an IT publication. I can't think of anything else at the time that worked that way. Trains were still run from timetables and signal boxes, not central control offices. Obviously the forces had the intel officers of their units reporting up the chain of command so that all their HQs had up-to-date maps - but they weren't doing that linked into networks of modern sensors (plus 12,000 mark I eyeballs).

Contrast this with the Luftwaffe who didn't have radar. So as well as flying all those sorties across the Channel without getting the kind of rest periods the RAF got, they were also having to sit in their cockpits for days on alert to defend against Bomber Command raiders trying to bomb their airfields.

I think this is why the Luftwaffe so badly underestimated the time it would take to defeat the RAF. In Poland and France it was easy to hit lots of planes on the ground, but that was much harder in attacking Britain - because the RAF aimed to intercept every raid (even if only to disrupt them with a few attackers) - and there was warning and time to get planes off the ground. And that time didn't have to gained by having vast numbers of units on combat air patrol.

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Re: Poles

I remember an interview with a veteran from a documentary a few years ago. He was talking about killing and saying how he didn't like to think about it. "I was shooting at aeroplanes. That was my job, and it was how I preferred to think about it. A Polish pilot I was friends with was different. He was killing Germans." Which is of course understandable, having just fled from losing a war to defend their country.

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Re: The war is over, the empire is gone

While it's debatable if a Hitler would have emerged had the Versailles Treaty been less harsh, and while one can't "blame" WW2 on those who penned the Treaty's key provisions -- i.e. France and England -- they certainly had a hand in forging one of the key links that made WW2 possible.

Who can say? The psychological damage done by the defeat of WWI was also pretty heavy. Versailles didn't help, but as someone else has said - it's what Germany did to France in 1870.

Also Versailles was far less punishing than what Germany imposed on Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, and is also far less punishing than the settlement Germany was planning to impose on France in 1914 if they'd won.

Versailles cause the early 20s inflation crisis - that lead to all the stories of people taking money round in wheelbarrows. But that was more-or-less sorted by 1924, and most of the Versailles debt had been forgiven or inflated away rather than paid back under the Dawes Plan.

It was the Great Depression that directly led to the Nazis achieving power. And the fact that German society was so polarised. Between them the Nazis and the Communists could block legislation, so one side or t'other had to be brought in to cooperation. But maybe if the politicians in the centre had stopped political parties with violent military wings from being allowed to stand in democratic elections - they'd have had less of a problem.

Also if Britain and France had been more willing to fight, they may not have had to. But to be fair to their leadership, having just been through the horrors of World War I - they really didn't want a war. So they did what they saw as the moral thing to avoid one. But that morality was useless in the face of the immorality of the Axis powers. Even as late as 1938 - going to war for Czechoslovakia may have brought Hitler down. Or not of course... Both sides would have been much less prepared for war, but the Germans weren't then in a position to blitz there way to Paris in a few weeks.

Safety driver at the wheel of self-driving Uber car that killed a pedestrian is charged with negligent homicide

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Re: Elephant in the cab

Captain Boing,

No apology from me. Don't think I'd have downvoted you though, just disagreed with you. And I still do.

The job is impossible Pilots are massively trained in order to take over from the autopilot at short notice, but they generally have systems to make sure that they get notice of crashing into things. There's a lot of space up there, and not that much stuff.

So the problems they're mostly trained to deal with are the systems of the plane going wrong.

And even with all this training, and two of them being available to make it easier for one to be fully alert for only a short period - they still mess it up sometimes.

Google had their test cars manned with 2 people. One to fill out the forms, and one to stare out of the window. So you can have them swap over, and talk to each other and also watch each other so nobody is tempted to answer a text.

I believe in aircraft safety it's called human factors analysis. Even when one person is directly to blame for an accident - they still go off and look at why it happened. Like the BA plane where the mechanic used the wrong bolts on the windscreen and it blew out in flight. Taking the pilot with it - luckily his leg got caught and he survived having his head banged down the side of the aircraft and being held by his legs for ten minutes.

However the mechanic was working alone, late at night, on a stupidly short deadline. The parts he needed weren't easily available, and nor were the instructions - so he tried to measure by eye and screwed up. He made the mistake, but although there was a proper procedure he should have followed, management had set the system up so that it wasn't possible to do that in the available time. So nobody actually followed procedure. So he wasn't blamed, and BA were forced to change their procedures.

Apple takes another swing at Epic, says Unreal Engine could be a 'trojan horse' threatening security

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Re: "imminent threat to Apple’s customers’ data (including children’s data)"

This isn't just any court filing. It's a high profile case. Epic began it with simultaneous moves against both Apple and Google, and had pre-prepared press statements and videos released simultaneously with their lawsuits the day they got chucked out of both app stores.

Managing to get chucked out of both on the same day was clearly deliberate too - and will have taken a bit bof effort to organise.

Hence Apple are responding in kind, with the full PR treatment.

That long-awaited, super-hyped Apple launch: Watches, iPads... and one more thing. Oh, actually that's it

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Happy

Clocks (or time displays) are everywhere. Watches need a new role.

I can't read those without binocculars. Watches are easier to carry...

I can't read my oven timer from the kitchen table 3 feet away - so I admit I'm a bit of a special case...

On t'other hand, when running for a train - you are correct that there is a clock on the platform. But not on the bridge to get over the line, or on the street outside - so I don't know if I need to run, walk or jog. I can get the phone out of my pocket, but then I might be dragging a case behind me or carrying a bag.

Because I can't read them, that also means my house tragically lacks wall clocks. Thus my friends also require a watch. Well actually they complain that I haven't set the oven clock right - which I don't because I can't read it. So I'm forced to keep it correct...

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Re: understatement of the new decade

I bought the Air, at Christmas. It had more memory than the basic, so once I'd upgraded that the price difference would have been smaller. Crucially though, it's thinner and lighter. Which in something I now hold for at least an hour a day is worth the extra money alone.

The slightly bigger screen is also nice. It has the option to use the pencil 1 - but I've not been willing to blow £120 on one until I'm convinced that Apple now properly support handwriting in apps like email. I seem to remember that the next version of iOS might do this - but have lost track.

I also use my iPad for games, so being faster was also nicer. I couldn't justify the extra money for the 13" Pro though, but was tempting.

I can read on the iPad by zooming in - which means I don't need my reading glasses. So for me, even a marginally bigger screen is a bonus - but I'd suspect for most people that the downsides of the extra size outweigh the benefits of the bigger screen.

Court hearing on election security is zoombombed on 9/11 anniversary with porn, swastikas, pics of WTC attacks

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Re: What?

Scott 26,

Why thankyou. [blushes]

I think it was the tone of this whole thread that sent me off into my little rant. Plus at the time the OP had 6 upvotes and no downvotes - which annoyed me even more...

If it had been a tone of amusement that some kids had made a court watch porn, that would be all fine and dandy. Who doesn't like saying "bum" in church after all?

But there's a whole bunch of posts on this thread about how these idiots deserved it, for not securing their IT properly. And that they people who should be punished are not those who are in comtempt of court for no valid reason - but the poor sods who'd had to learn a bunch of new skills on the fly because of Covid19.

Which is an attitude that really pisses me off! It comes from an entirely misplaced elitism. Sure there are many people here who are part of the IT elite. Know the jargon, can use the magic computer boxes that perplex and petrifiy so many of our fellow humans. And that's great, and it's important that they exist. But there's this unhealthy (and ugly) attitude on here sometimes of contempt for those not blessed with those skills. Yet how many of us can fix our own cars, or perform heart surgery, or even work out how to do their taxes properly? All also vital skills for living in the modern world. We have a very diverse economy with many specialist skills - and society needs all of them to work well. But not everyone can be on top of all of them at once.

To quote my friend, who designs and hand-builds furniture - "I don't want to know why it's broken. I don't understand computers. I understand wood." He's got a black belt in judo, used to do cave and mountain rescue, can build beautiful pieces of furniture that will probably be on the antiques roadshow in 100 years, can draw upside down while designing a piece of furniture in his head and explaining to you how it will work and where it will fit in the design of a room and can do stand-up comedy. Are those not enough skills that he shouldn't have to be considered useless, just because he struggles with computers?

Ooops. Grumpy Rant: The Sequel. Sod it! I'll post it anyway.

Nvidia says regulators will be 'very supportive' of $40bn Arm buy despite concerns about chip designer's independence

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Re: Have an upvote for desperate fake news

amanfrommars1,

I wouldn't normally take you seriously and answer, but seeing as you're floating some Russian state propganda out there pretending it's news - I'm going to.

I'm happy with my "almost certainly". Not only am I happy to assume that the Russian government did it, but I'm also happy to state that they want me to think they did it. And they want to be all smug and plesased with themselves that I they know that I know that they know that I know...

The bullshit from RT is only put out there to give their supporters, and the idiots who seem to persist in deciding that morality requires being anti-Western because reaons, some plausible bollocks to spout. So they don't have to accept the vaccuousness of their political positions.

If the GRU hadn't poisoned Skripal then once it was known that he'd been poisoned with high grade Russian chemical weapons - the Russian government would have launched an investigation into why those weapons had gone missing. Whereas what they actually did was spout increasing amounts of bollocks and have their UK ambassador trolling on social media. For which I'd personally have expelled him from the country, but I suppose having kicked out so many other diplomats that would have looked a bit vindictive. There would have been some cooperation with the enquiry, even if done quietly so as not to admit embarrassment - instead the GRU got caught red handed trying to hack into the independent OPCW lab that were verifying the test results from the UK.

And then they put up their two "businessmen" on telly. The ones that just happened to have sequential passport numbers, and despite hailing from Siberia - were unable to walk 10 minutes through British slush!

And now we see the same program here. Official denials, combined with trolling and a smirking, pathetic, triumphant, poking at the story so that everybody knows that not only they did it, but they're proud of themselves.

The Russian government's recent history and current actions tell me that not only they did it, but they're not unhappy for people to think that.