* Posts by JetSetJim

2156 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Jul 2009

Consumer campaign to keep receiving printed till receipts looks like a good move – on paper

JetSetJim

Re: Universal store card

Or just have the till edit a programmable RFID with the transaction details on it - wave your phone over it and the phone grabs the details and stores the receipt in your own device, synched to whichever data-slurper you want, but encrypted and the store has nothing on you.

Have to agree that giving email details to a store to get a receipt is not what I want, but paper ones do tend to get lost/torn/wiped clean by the ravages of time (I have lots of blank receipts, it would seem).

UK.gov's smart meter cost-benefit analysis for 2019 goes big on cost, easy on the benefits

JetSetJim

Re: If "smart meters" are so good

Sheesh - Thames Water charges £1.40 per m^3 (aka 1,000 litres), so your machine was using 3,500 litres per wash!!

JetSetJim

Re: What's a meter reader?

Certainly water meters, where fitted, are mandated to be read by a water board operative at least twice a year (or so I was told by Thames Water).

For gas & electricity, suppliers are only obliged to read and inspect you meter once every 2 years, according to Ofgem

JetSetJim

Re: In-House Displays

FWIW my last two (electric) cookers have beeped forlornly when reaching temperature. One a fancy Miele oven that comes with some bells and whisltes, the other a cheap Panasonic desktop oven that has the crappest UI known to mankind (doesn't show the temperature at all, and won't let you set a timer unless it has already beeped at you to let you know it is up to temperature)

JetSetJim

Re: Don't want. Don't need

The report seems to imply a 15 year lifespan, but obviously YMMV (I believe the repeated application of a hammer somewhat impedes their functioning to desired operational standards)

JetSetJim

Re: Don't want. Don't need

Maybe they live at one of the poles, but also in a valley? So they are currently getting 600W, so in 4 hours time the sun will set for them until next year. A bit niche, perhaps, for a solar panel installation.

FWIW, the place with the lowest amount of sunshine per annum is Jan Mayen, a Norwegian island. A piece of land near Greenland. This is one of the darkest places on the planet that gets only 823 hours of sunshine a year

JetSetJim
Facepalm

Re: Don't want. Don't need

Just noticed the £660m energy bill for smart meters is over "the appraisal period", which is 21 years, so only £31.4m/year (and something was off in my calcs!)

JetSetJim

Re: Don't want. Don't need

The linked report attempts to gloss over the shit-shower that are "smart meters". Table 6 attempts to quantiy the benefits in terms of energy reduction, but neglects to work out the "per meter" benefit. Doing some simple maths (and hoping this doesn't set me up for an epic maths fail), and the benefit per year to electricity users is £11.69 in savings, and for gas it's £5.45 (both on regular domestic credit contracts).

Looking at the hardware, they have device installation costs of £88 / meter for single fuel, or £143 for dual fuel, and device costs (average over projected roll-out) of £36 for electric or £53 for gas.

So, for the best case dual-fuel customer, total cost to become "smart" is £143 + 36 + 53 = £231, for a savings of £17.14, requiring 13.5 years to balance out!

Costs/benefits I've ignored so far - not having someone wandering the streets reading every meter twice a year, O&M costs of the meters, the report also menstions a need for "communications hubs", then there's the in home display costs (£15 each), IT costs, DCC costs, marketing the dumb things, additional energy consumption for the displays (2.6W more power than traditional meter, plus comms hub power) which they reckon is £660m (p29) vs the total energy savings from folks being "smarter" of £159m (Electricity) + £61m (Gas), which doesn't seem all that good a balance so something must be off here!!!

Looking at it another way, they project total costs of £13.4bn, and they've got 13.6m electricity meters installed and 11m gas meters installed. Therefore cost per fuel is approx £544.71. For a consumer savings of £17/year

Either way you look at it, it's a shameless frittering of public funds

HP printer small print says kit phones home data on whatever you print – and then some

JetSetJim
Pint

Re: Trustworthy?

You need the ShitDex, currently under construction by the great InternetOfShit

Fitbit fitness fans furious following flummoxing flawed firmware float, fleeting feedback, failed fixes

JetSetJim
Windows

On an S7 running Android 8.0 with a Charge 2 and not having any trouble at all

Not so G.fast: Hybrid fibre 'under review' as Openreach remembers it's all about FTTP now

JetSetJim

Re: Step 1

Depends on the development and the local infrastructure. For small stuff (e.g. self build) they'll only connect to whatever is there. When I built my house (2014-15), BTO would only run copper as that was all the exchange would connect to. They even wouldn't commit to giving me a FTTC line.

JetSetJim

Re: Step 1

Indeed, or at least FTTP sheathed in copper so that it's upgradeable at minimal cost when the backend eventually gets upgraded to cope with fibre connections

Not so easy to make a quick getaway when it takes 3 hours to juice up your motor, eh Brits?

JetSetJim

It would be good to mandate over-production to inject it back into all the caves that have been drilled into over the last century or so

JetSetJim

IIRC you need 55C to kill off Legionnaires bacteria...

JetSetJim

Re: Without a coherant national energy strategy

aka political posturing

JetSetJim

The number of petrol stations is available, at least. Currently just over 8,000, which is fewer than Zap-Map's reported 9000+ charging locations

JetSetJim
Coat

Re: Maybe Base 10 is not used

It's El Reg and you think that in their numbering system all the digits exist?

JetSetJim

> Or you could, you know, have things like batteries - both grid-scale and local, pumped hydro (where the solar/wind is used to power the pumps), thermal solar (i.e. mirrors direct the suns rays to a big thermal mass that heats up and can take a day or more to cool down, providing electricity the entire cooling cycle), and so on.

There are limited sites available for such storage infrastructure - IIRC there's not many places in the UK that can do pumped storage at scale (perhaps build lots of water towers, but that sounds expensive) - Wales has a couple, probably, and maybe a few places could be built up North. Thermal solar? This *is* the UK, right? Not much use for 10 months of the year.

Or you could buy a shit load of Tesla power walls...

UK ISPs must block access to Nintendo Switch piracy sites, High Court rules

JetSetJim
Coat

Re: When DNS over https become the main

> What am I missing here?

err Tor?

Facebook: Remember how we promised we weren’t tracking your location? Psych! Can't believe you fell for that

JetSetJim

Re: It strikes me that the *only* application that requires my location

also add elderly/infirm relative tracker, and other such not-quite-999/911-emergency applications

JetSetJim

Re: Small correction re. Android

Pfft - I'm still on v8.0, waiting for 9 (or even 8.1). Seems S7's don't get any updates beyond security patches any more

JetSetJim

Re: Facebook app alternatives (on Android)

Not sure why the downvotes, apart from not putting the links in tags! FB (and others) surely need no app to provide the features they offer. I only access FB via a browser, so it is limited in what it can harvest. The only weird thing is that on the mobile web page it will always attempt to get you to install Messenger rather than let you see your messages - unless you switch to the desktop site. I wonder what info Messenger attempts to slurp....

JetSetJim

Re: Samsung phones

I have an S7 with no FB presence on it at all - not sure if it was "bundled" with it when I got it. It may also depend on where you get the phone from - I bought mine from Clove, not from the operator.

JetSetJim

Re: Interesting phrasing

> "We may still understand your location using things like check-ins, events and information about your internet connection"

> Understand your location sounds a lot friendlier than the more accurate determine your location.

It doesn't to me - it sounds more like "we shovel as much of the information about you as we can gather into some mystical algorithms to determine as much marketable information as we can find so that we can sell it on - and we'll take anything we can get our grubby paws on from the underlying OS and whatever you unwittingly enter into the app in the misguided belief that your value as a person increases with the number of posts you make"

Now on Amazon Prime: The Amazing Shrinking UK Tax Burden

JetSetJim
Coat

Re: Reality

Someone's got to run around connecting the bits of string between properties...

JetSetJim

Re: Revenue and profit

You made a mistake - trademark cost should actually be 2Bn, giving a net loss that can be carried forward just in case Amazon have a good year in the near future and accidentally make more profit here than planned

Finally! A solution to 42 – the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything

JetSetJim

As an individual result it may not really help all that much, but I'd posit that at the very least:

a) an algorithm was developed to help search the solution space - perhaps a nice undergrad project, possibly even a masters element

b) existing theorem's/hypotheses are present that help filter out bits of the solution space as a waste of search time - having this result will help validate them or even extend them, even if it can't prove a general case

c) it may perhaps inspire others to come up with a general purpose proof that these things exist, much like Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's theorem - I suspect this is more in line with the end game.

An example of an instance where the equation holds true isn't proof that the equation is true for all values - the two problems are approached in a very different way, and both pose challenges in implementation, and (for some) are fun to play with.

Let the maths-bods have some fun, and that includes the ones donating CPU to the project.

Be still, our drinking hearts: Help Reg name whisky beast conjured by Swedish distillers and AI blendbot

JetSetJim
Pint

Marvin...

Winsky

Cu in Hell: Thousands internetless after copper thieves pinch 500m of cable in Cambridgeshire

JetSetJim

Re: A simple (but costly) answer

The article says it was underground cable, so probably a good chunk of the value was in the armour

JetSetJim

Re: A simple (but costly) answer

I think perhaps these sorts of cables should be armoured, and not so easily cut with a spade

The wheels on the bus go round and... Oh dear. Chancellor Sajid Javid unveils spending review

JetSetJim

Re: "the opportunities created by Brexit".

> The list of opportunities depends on what trade deal there is. At one extreme if we stayed in the EU common market, there would be no change and no opportunities

Why is this? There's been the recent trade deal with Japan that we won't get to enjoy the opportunities of, for example.

Similarly, people have the opportunity to work in any of the 27 EU member states right now, without having to do much paperwork (if any). And Brexiteers want to chuck that away and leave people with fewer opportunities.

Indeed, we do have immigration to our country as well, but we do have the authority to chuck out economic spongers while we are in the EU - you can't just come in and sign on for benefits forever, you have to be economically productive to remain in the country.

The second we leave, everything we buy and sell internationally becomes more expensive. If the muppets in charge drop import tariffs to zero, then while prices might stay the same there is no incentive for other countries to enter into any negotiations to reduce their tariffs on our goods/services, thus making it hard for us to sell to anyone.

This should surely be enough of a reason to stay in without having to go into more speculative stuff about chlorinated chicken and selling the NHS

JetSetJim

Re: "the opportunities created by Brexit".

> It's strange that HM's Loyal Opposition aren't jumping at the chance to lead the UK, lead the negotiations, secure us a better deal and respect the wishes of the people

Because the only reason De Pfeffer and his cohorts have tabled the motion for an election is to increase the chances of a No Deal Brexit, which will severely shit on the UK economy, but benefit their financial backers who have been vigorously shorting sterling for the last month or two.

JetSetJim
Facepalm

Re: "the opportunities created by Brexit".

you forget the opportunity to make exactly the same deal as we already have with various states individually - e.g. the hyper-massive fish and sugar deal with Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

We currently export about £160m of stuff to Fifi (oddly it's up on the historic trend of around £50m) and receive back less than £50m. Papua New Guinea is a bit bigger an importer of our stuff with around £280m, compared to us buying £100m of their goods.

Good job we've got such keep negotiators in the Foreign Office - I was almost scared of Brexit for one minute... Now I'm enthused at these opportunities. Who cares about the £33Bn we export to France, or the £50Bn we export to Germany. Never mind that we trade more with the EU than we do with the rest of the world combined...

JetSetJim
Holmes

Re: Put it on the side of a bus

It's all there to obfuscate the Original Sin of scribbling a lie on the side of a bus. Political SEO, if you will

Business PC sales up as suits flee looming end of support for Windows 7

JetSetJim

Keeping Win7, can pry it out of my cold dead hands...

..until there is a stable, non-invasive, non-data-slurping, offline only version of Windows to replace it with.

Cali court backs ex-Apple engineer who says he invented Find My iPhone and Passbook

JetSetJim

Re: Why

At least for one of the patents, he claimed he had IPR developed prior to joining Apple in 2006 and declared in an intellectual property agreement he signed with Apple in 2005. Makes you wonder what is in the agreement, especially as the patents in the article were only filed 5 years later...

JetSetJim

If there's any novelty in those patents it's really, really skinny and not monetisable. I've had a peek through them and there were products on the market that did broadly similar things to them prior t othe earliest filing date (at least the 4 that are for Find My Phone, unsure about the Wallet patent)

JetSetJim
Headmaster

Patent #1: System and method for remotely initiating lost mode on a computing device. File date is June 2012. From the claims, seems to basically be a patent for a computer device to receive an authenticated command to go into lock-down mode (supress some functionality) or come out of it, transmitting time-stamped location info to the requesting user based on criteria (periodic, heuristic, ...) while in lost mode.

Patent #2: Remotely initiating lost mode on a computing device. File date is June 2012. Covers some server side functionality for receiving the lost phone data stream, plus mentions disabling power off and reporting battery life

Patent #3: Device locator disable authentication. File date is June 2013. Associates a device by hardware ID to a "cloud account" of some form, that allows for "lost mode" control, includes remote wipe functionality

Patent #4: Bypassing security authentication scheme on a lost device to return the device to the owner. File date is Nov 2013. Covers "privileged contacts" who can be contacted from the lost phone to override lost mode. Seems to be limited to WiFi connections only, but it's written in patent-speak, so difficult to tell :)

Patent #5: Location-Based Ticket Books. File date June 2013. Seems to be the Apple Wallet patent, storing "virtual tickets"

A lot of the first 4 patents' content is rather obvious considering there were products on the market for laptops which you could trigger to fire up the camera and take pics and send them to ppl - I even knocked one up in (crap) code to check a GMail account for a trigger email, do the pics and email them, from memory that was in 2011, but I didn't bother publishing it.

Similarly, the Prey app (one of many), was initially published in 2009, probably did what I was trying to do much better! this article seems to show a great deal of the "patented" features in action and available for desktop clients.

IANAPatent Attorney (but have read quite a few patents in my time), but all four Find My Phone patents look rather "obvious to one skilled in the art", if not already in the public domain at least a year prior to filing.

The Apple Wallet one? I was getting e-tickets to stuff before the file date, and they all came into my Gmail account. Might be moderately novel to merge tickets from different providers into an app for convenience, I'll give them that.

Electric vehicles won't help UK meet emissions targets: Time to get out and walk, warn MPs

JetSetJim
Coat

Re: What a joke

> ask for £15mil per charging station

I have a good design for it, looks a bit like a barrel so that you can more easily drive through it, and the acronym "Place Of Recharging Kilowatts"

JetSetJim
WTF?

Re: 50 miles???

And this is for 54 charging stations only (which will seem to cost £14m each, too, to get to the £800m figure). For comparison, as of 2018 there were 8,394 petrol stations in the UK (down from a peak of 40k in the mid 60's, apparently!).

I suspect there are more than 54 charging stations in the UK already, though. Zap Map thinks it knows about 9,425 locations, with 25,401 connectors with public access in the UK, increasing at a rate of 500 devices / 800 connectors per month

TalkTalk's voice-over is writing speeds that its text can't match: Ad pulled from broadcast

JetSetJim
Pint

Would have been nice if the article had mentioned that. But good spot, nonetheless

Sueball claims Tesla solar panels are so effective, they started fires at Walmart stores

JetSetJim
Headmaster

Re: Ethically and Linguistically Challenged Lawyers

Ambulances can do that anyway, if traffic is impeding their progress - but have an upvote anyway :)

JetSetJim

Re: $deities have a sense of humor

> only a minority of houses have roofs which face in a southerly direction

Citation needed? Roads run east to west in probable equal numbers to ones that run north to south - the last 4 houses I lived in all had south facing roofs. From a statistical perspective I'd expect a moderately even split (ignoring that the UK doesn't lay things out on a grid very much)

Equally, there's arguments for east-west roofs being better for solar as it leads to smoother power generation over the course of the day (perhaps not as much total generation per sq m of panel) - not sure how good those arguments are, tho.

JetSetJim
Black Helicopters

Re: $deities have a sense of humor

I guess the key there is "if the installation was to code" - requires both adequate training of fitters, plus adequate inspection by trained inspectors. Is this the case?

Not saying Elon and his solar company are taking shortcuts, but I can quite easily envisage a large demand for his trendy products resulting in under-capacity of fitters, potentially resulting in speedy recruitment and not necessarily the best capability fitters. Combine that with a lazy inspector, and you may well get this. But then equally you'd have thought Walmart being a large customer, they might put a good team on that job to ensure it's done right and the customer expands their network.

Or it's just Big Oil (TM) fuzzing Elon to put him out of business and keep the dinosaurs burning

Brits are sitting on a time bomb of 40m old electronic devices that ought to be recycled

JetSetJim
Coat

Re: Takes less than a minute to look this stuff up...

Maybe he's anti-recycling, trying to get folks to buy into the "elements are getting scarcer, so stockpile what you've got (and buy even more of them) as they'll be worth a fortune in 100 years time

Huawei goes all Art of War on us: Switches on 'battle mode' and vows to 'dominate the world'

JetSetJim

Re: Game of Tanks

Why the downer? They are beating US business at the tech game - they've outmanouevered several large US companies (e.g. Motorola, who now barely exists) in achieving this. Nuff said. There are hints of backdoors being provided to Chinese authorities, but nothing particularly concrete (as opposed to those found in Cisco kit). Also, they've played a bit fast & loose with the rules around copyright & patent protection (at least in the past).

I suspect the main thing is that they are becoming a big player in network infrastructure, and they are not in a Special Relationship (TM) with the US.

World recoils in horror as smartphone maker accused of helping government snoops read encrypted texts, track device whereabouts

JetSetJim

Re: Nope I'm lost

I do like the way that it's targetting both Huawei the cell phone maker (to get s/w on the phone to log decrypted comms), and Huawei the network infrastructure vendor (for location info). Ignoring the fact that it's the network operator (MTN, Airtel, Vodafone or one of 4 other lesser known ones) providing the information.

Obvs the buried story is "Ugandan govmt spies on opposition", not "Uganda uses intercept techniques made available by Huawei (ignoring the fact that other vendors would do exactly the same thing at the very least if provided with sufficient in-country legal documentation)".

Huawei is not being "caught" doing the spying - it is more likely the operator responding to a legally-correctly framed request for information (or providing a back door to the info). And it's certainly not a hack, it's a standard interface provided by every network infrastructure vendor.

It's official – Google AI gives you cancer ...diagnosis in real time: Neural net can spot breast, prostate tumors

JetSetJim

Better that than ARMful

JetSetJim

Re: Proof of concept

PAM50 is a test against 50 genes.

Here's a list of cancer categories:

https://ww5.komen.org/AboutBreastCancer/DiagnosingBreastCancer/UnderstandingaDiagnosis/TumorTypesSizesGrades.html

(from the same site that told me about the PAM50 test)

Let's see what the sweet, kind, new Microsoft that everyone loves is up to. Ah yes, forcing more Office home users into annual subscriptions

JetSetJim

Re: Or...

Although if you leave your employer, presumably you have to uninstall, buy a new license, or get a job with another employer in the same scheme