* Posts by Stoneshop

5951 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2009

UK.gov finally adds Galileo and Copernicus to the Brexit divorce bill

Stoneshop

Re: TL;DR

There would then be a hard border between the glorious kingdom of Little England and Wales/Scotland.

There's Hadrian's Wall already, might need some patching up.

World's oldest URL – fragments 73,000 years old – discovered in cave

Stoneshop
Windows

"hop limit"

Which would definitely mess up BGP, the Beer Gateway Protocol. Single Malt Transfer Protocol would be unaffected.

Stoneshop

An old Sinclair Spectrum magazine.

Found in a cave as well?

Raspberry Pi supremo Eben Upton talks to The Reg about Pi PoE woes

Stoneshop

Re: Hats off to 'em...

Hats off?

It's with this hat on that the Pi can run on PoE.

Stoneshop

Re: Have a PoE beer

could I even use a decent battery or a small UPS to feed the DC power into the central 802.3af kit, maybe?

If you manage to find a PoE switch of the capacity you need, and then a telco version: those have a 48VDC input (in some cases instead of the mains power input, but usually next to one). But UPSes with busted batteries often go cheap-ish, and a lot of them run on 12V 7Ah or 12V 12Ah AGM batteries.

The smaller NetGear desktop switches tend to run off an external 48V power brick/wall wart, depending on size. Easy enough to splice a stack of 12V AGM batteries in.

Stoneshop

Re: Been looking for decent/affordable PoE for years, this looks interesting

Is it compatible/compliant with any particular PoE standards,

They are 802af compliant. I'm running Netgear GS724 PoE switches, and found no problems with them.

Stoneshop

Re: Been running PoE Pis for years...

Yep, they work very nice (mine does pass Ethernet correctly, so, yay).

I'm thinking of building a widget that takes the USB plug (or any of the other plug variants) and feeds 5V into the IO connector in such a way that you don't get that USB plug sticking out sideways.

Stoneshop

Re: Oh dear, a fan

There are probably industrial applications where PoE has advantages.

My PoE switches are powered off an UPS, so anything powered via PoE automatically benefits. And the other advantage is that via those switches I can switch off or power cycle all of those devices remotely.

In my house there's at least one Arduino in an inaccessible location that I would not think of powering any other way.

A boss pinching pennies may have cost his firm many, many pounds

Stoneshop

Re: Imagine... we don't need no stinkin' switches!

Ah what you should have done was to put the PoE injectors at the endpoints rather than in the cabinets.

The APs were often to be installed in ventilation shafts, broom cupboards and such, where a power socket would either be nonexistent or prone to being reused by cleaners and the like.

Stoneshop
Facepalm

Re: Imagine...

The mid-management ordered as many PoE injectors instead of buying a couple PoE switches because some money was saved.

I once had to install PoE-powered access points in a couple of locations. The first few I was supplied with 802af-compliant injectors and splitters, and all was good. The next couple I got issued with what turned out to be cheapies that just put 15VDC on the spare wire pairs (this was all 100BT), and of course that didn't work out so well with the more remote APs. A 20m run was OK, between 20 and 25 was a bit hit and miss, anything over 25m the AP collapsed in a gibbering heap the moment its radios got powered up if it started at all. Multiple meetings with a team of beancounters ensued, with the final one ending with a threat to strangle any of them that dared change the approved component list, using the cable length for the APs that wouldn't work. After stuffing the cruddy pseudo-PoE gear (nasty square metal boxes and power bricks with conventional transformers) into their posterior orifice.

Also, at one location one of the APs was to be positioned right on top of the equipment rack so using PoE would be quite superfluous; I could just as well have plugged the original AP power brick into the socket that the PoE injector would be plugged in, but the technical nitwit overseeing the project denied that change. The first site visit after the acceptance inspection the PoE setup for that AP miraculously morphed into the more sensible layout.

Dear America: Want secure elections? Stick to pen and paper for ballots, experts urge

Stoneshop
FAIL

Re: Somehow...

All of which costs money. Try doing all that from the same shoestring budget...

The budget grows proportionally with the population.

At least, in countries other than the US.

Stoneshop

Re: Somehow...

Doesn't a concern of scale present itself then?

No. With a larger population, the number of districts, voting officials and observers just has to be increased so that each district still covers about the same number of voters. And with a larger population you will have a larger pool from which to select those officials.

One thing that would help is limiting the number of items to vote on. Why the fsck should one vote for a dogcatcher? Party affiliation should be irrelevant, personal preference might play a little, but the main criterion is whether he or she is good at catching the dogs that should be caught (and not the ones that shouldn't). Doing that job badly? Demote to drain cleaner.

Stoneshop

Re: Blue sky / Out of the box thinking...

In Britain, that is what the political parties do. They call it canvassing.

Ehm, no. That's just a particular way of promoting one's party. The way I read Geoffrey W's comment, he wants voting officials going around, and recording the actual votes from people at their homes. With a police officer as observer/protection.

Doesn't solve the problem it intends to solve, and introduces a bunch of others.

Stoneshop
FAIL

Re: Blue sky / Out of the box thinking...

You could solve the hacking problem and the participation problem at the same time.

... while introducing several others, like all elegible voters having to be at home during a rather extended time window, and lack of sensible oversight: at a voting station there can easily be several observers (from all parties in the race, as well as neutral non-participants) watching the ballot boxes and the entire process all the time.

And the hacking problem isn't limited to the voting itself and the tallying afterwards. As I mentioned above, the voter registration databases need to be equally protected. One way or another you have to compile a list of who's over voting age and entitled to vote in the election at hand (resident status can allow voting in municipal council but not for national government particular criminal convictions may limit your voting rights, etc.).

Stoneshop
Big Brother

And not only the voting itself

There's also the voter registration databases that need to be secured against tampering. Otherwise, who knows what can happen when Mr. Buttle presents himself and finds he's registered as Mr. Tuttle?

Cover up your privates: Linux distro Tails drops a new version

Stoneshop
Thumb Up

Re: I'm on a List?

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered, not signed in triplicate,

sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, not subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally not buried in soft peat and recycled as firelighters."

Voyager 1 left the planet 41 years ago – and SpaceX hopes to land on Earth this Saturday

Stoneshop
Boffin

Re: 3.6AU per year

That's angular velocity. It's not moving at all relative to earth's orbit, which is what AU refers to.

AU is a distance, and linear speeds can thus be expressed as AU over time_interval. Angular velocity is how much of an arc an object covers in a certain amount of time, so radians, or degrees, over time_interval. The ISS whizzing along at 17500 mph (7820m/s, 1.65AU/year) is its orbital speed.

Stoneshop

Re: 3.6AU per year

That sounds impressively fast, but when I worked it out (please check my maths here!) it's approximately: 334640906 miles (according to Google's conversion).

Bah, Google. Doesn't even know about El Reg Standard Units.

rik@argus201s:~$ units

Currency exchange rates from www.timegenie.com on 2016-06-21

2954 units, 109 prefixes, 88 nonlinear units

You have: 3.6AU/year

You want: km/s

* 17.066058

/ 0.058595839

You have: 3.6AU/year

You want: VSheepVac

* 0.0028467153

/ 351.28206

ZX Spectrum Vega+ blows a FUSE: It runs open-source emulator

Stoneshop
Trollface

in a massive box.

Where did they find the money for that, and the postage?

'Can you just pop in to the office and hit the power button?' 'Not really... the G8 is on'

Stoneshop
Stop

Impatient drivers

One sunny Sunday a good while ago I was doing traffic safety at a local run. Runners coming out of a side street and crossing a relatively major road out of the city. You stop the traffic as needed so the runners don't get splatted as that tends to cause a bit of a mess and some related problems.

Anyway, a bit into the race a sizeable number of runners are crossing, no gaps to let traffic through, and at some point a Volvo driver got impatient, got out of the queue and into the other lane and accelerated towards the actual crossing. As stopping that car looks to be somewhat unhealthy I block the runners, and I've probably shouted "Stop" or "Watch out" at them.

For the other direction there's a proper police officer controlling the traffic. Who just turns around immediately, points at the Volvo and bellows "STOP". And then points to the grass verge. We then continued to deal with the traffic and the runners, and at the very end the Volvo driver was dealt with, in a very thorough and extended way.

Utterly satisfying to watch.

Stoneshop
Facepalm

Re: A web power switch ?

You can buy a web power switch off Amazon for about $10. They call them "smart plugs". All cheap IoT crap.

And to operate them from afar you need a working DSL as well as the appropriate hole(s) in your firewall. Those not working correctly could be a reason to want to use the switch while actually making it impossible to do so.

An Arduino checking outbound connectivity from inside your home LAN and toggling power to the modem is a) not relying on the connectivity it's trying to restore and b) autonomous.

Improving this setup so that the Arduino (code or hardware) failing is dealt with is left as an exercise for the reader.

'Unhackable' Bitfi crypto-currency wallet maker will be shocked to find fingernails exist

Stoneshop
Black Helicopters

Re: First rule of security...

Eventually we harden it so much to stop the packets

Several inches of armour plating, for a start?

Stoneshop

Re: 6580?

6502 = 8 bit, 64k address range.

6580 = 40 * 8 bit, 40 * 64k, or 320 bit, 2.136E96 address range

Stoneshop
Facepalm

Duress codes

But someone who knows about duress codes would just shake you down more for, "Now the OTHER code!"

"It doesn't have one"

"Enter the OTHER CODE"

"It doesn't have one, but if you insist". Enters the access code backwards, which wipes the unit (at that point you should consider the device irretrievably lost/inaccessible to you anyway).

"See, it's empty. Here, you can have it"

Stoneshop
Windows

What shoddy design is this?

It doesn't even incorporate Secure Blockchain[tm].

Stoneshop
Windows

Re: McAfee credible?

I am shocked that his endorsement of a product might be considered a plus

To you and me it's not, but there are millions of rubes who just know his name from the AV stuff and consider that authorative on security matters

Stoneshop
Devil

Re: The universal law

It's your use of the word 'if' that's caught my attention. What would it take to make a physical object inaccessible to a well-resourced attacker?

If they're dedicated to getting into your secure device specifically, then there's very little you can do.

But in most cases you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the next person.

Build your own NASA space rover: Here are the DIY JPL blueprints

Stoneshop
Joke

Riding to work

Especially if they work at the Mars factory.

Stoneshop
Boffin

Boo

Battery Capacity 5200 [mAh]

That' should be an RTG, which undoubtedly increases the range considerably. As they probably aren't off-the-shelf, where are the plans for one of those, NASA?

And are there instructions to rad-harden the Pi?

The Solar System's oldest minerals reveal the Sun's violent past

Stoneshop
Boffin

Re: Highly volatile noble gases?

Highly volatile noble gases? I thought the point of noble gases were that they were 'noble' and basically inert.....

Reactive/inert is a different property than volatility..

Nah, it won't install: The return of the ad-blocker-blocker

Stoneshop

Re: Advertising from mobile 'phones

My .sig used to be "Sent from my Vertu". I've never even seen one.

"Sent from my Friden Flexowriter".

Okay, it also involved a punch tape reader and a laptop with a serial port, but the message was written on the Flexo.

Stoneshop
WTF?

Re: Not Ads, but chuggers

when you're trying to eat your tea

My impression is that most people tend to soak their tea leaves in boiling water for the appropriate time, then drink the infusion.

But whatever floats your boat.

Stoneshop

Re: Unpaid walking advert for someone else's company

In 1973 I bought an Omega wristwatch - because I wanted something that was self-winding, water-resistant, kept good time, and showed the date and day of week. Working hours were long and irregular at that time.

The Seiko 5 I was given forty years ago has all those features, still works fine when I wear it (not often; I've started disagreeing with the metal strap) and cost less than each of those Omega service jobs.

Stoneshop

Re: They Live....

Inherent in the LCD and LED technologies that underlies the displays.

LCD: yes. LED: no.

LCD works on the principle of polarisation by the liquid crystals and require light passing through. LEDs just emit (non-polarised) light themselves.

Some Things just aren't meant to be (on Internet of Things networks). But we can work around that

Stoneshop
Devil

Re: Just setup a separate Wifi network, name it "InternetOfShit"

Put all the IoT crap on a separate Wifi network,

With you so far.

leave it open to the Internet, and let it eat itself.

It will have no connectivity to the outside world. Nothing, zero, nada, zilch.

Stoneshop

Security what?

"When something becomes end-of-life it means there are no more security updates "

Given this criterion one should consider IoT devices as having an EoL date half a decade in the past.

At the very minimum.

All that dust on Mars is coming from one weird giant alien structure

Stoneshop
Thumb Up

Re: something else is to blame for the large swathes of dust

a single solar-powered soft-drinks machine still spewing it out.

A Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer that's gotten its head stuck in a pig into an infinite loop.

Stoneshop

Elon Musk

Let him start with cleaning up his own brain.

Either my name, my password or my soul is invalid – but which?

Stoneshop
Holmes

Re: "Wrong" email addresses

... we usually notify by email but we think something went wrong with our system as your email address is coming up as wall.meerkat+ourcompany@gmail.com"...

Couple of years ago I ordered some stuff from a webshop, using my standard pattern of "myname.webshop@surname.net". This resulted in them calling me to acknowledge the order, as their confirmation mail kept not getting sent (apparently they did pay attention to such things, good on them) and with it them expressing surprise at me having an account on their mailserver.

Their software apparently had some hitherto unknown knicker-twisting properties

Stoneshop
Trollface

Re: University

a dictionary word in just about any known language

SQL?

Doctor, doctor, I feel like my IoT-enabled vacuum cleaner is spying on me

Stoneshop

Re: Hollywood

When I was a kid they chased people on train roofs, can't wait to watch someone remotely clean someone else's carpet!

Nah, we can have a live view every day of an US predisent being controlled from Moscow.

‘Elders of the Internet’ apologise for social media, recommend Trump filters to fix it

Stoneshop

Re: Veritaserum

I like the Viking custom of trying to reach agreement on an important matter by holding a drunken conclave in the evening followed by a sober one the morning after.

The morning session may not be quite coherent, but at least there won't be much shouting.

Stoneshop
Coat

Re: They had me at "Trump filters"

Anyone calling themselves a "Task Force" is rarely legitimate.

They mispeeled "Tssk Force".

Official probe into HPE’s Oz 3Par crashes would create 'further negative publicity' if revealed

Stoneshop
Facepalm

Crucially, the denial letter we were sent also mentioned that disclosing the final report raised “the prospect of further negative publicity it could generate for HPE”

And holding back this information won't have customers, current and prospective, figuring there's something dicey to be kept hidden.

Stoneshop
Holmes

Re: Reading between the lines...

It's very interesting that the ATO only mentions HPE in its letter of denial when DXC were also involved "...tech services giant DXC, which installed the storage boxes..." in the implementation.

You are aware that DXC is the services branch of HPE, with just another name and half the knowledge lopped off?

Heatwave shmeatwave: Brit IT departments cool their racks – explicit pics

Stoneshop

Re: I've done this too

You really _REALLY_ have to wonder why with millions of squids worth of kit and redundancy up the wazoo,

Eh, what? Redundancy? At that time there were a dozen 785/8600/750 systems, half of them in a cluster, the others standalone (although the two PDPs could run the other's tasks if one of them failed) plus a scattering of MVII's. Disks: lots. Four HSC50s, maxed out, for the cluster. Plus some RAs for the standalones. PDPs ran off 4 RP06es each. I don't think there was disk mirroring in use (can't be arsed to look up if that was even an option with VMS 4.5), but there were a couple of unused disks which were used as lukewarm spares when needed. They didn't even have a no-break until the site became crucial as a comms hub for NW Europe. Which was close to a year later.

Tech team trapped in data centre as hypoxic gas flooded in. Again

Stoneshop

Re: Buncefield

Thought one of the kids had fallen out of their bunk bed. Next door's loft hatch fell in to their bedroom. And that was 12 miles away.

I was living in Enschede when the fireworks storage went up, and in my street there was no damage worth mentioning despite being a mere 1.6km away in a straight line; elsewehere there had been windows blown out at 10km and more.

It's 2018 so, of course, climate.news is sold to climate change deniers

Stoneshop
Holmes

Re: Denier?

so these are people interested in meteorological change and who judge the thickness of yarns?

Well, with average temperatures rising one tends to see a significant decrease in, or even absence of hosiery, and a corresponding reduction of the thickness of the yarn out of which it's made.

Stoneshop
Headmaster

Re: WTF!!

Homeopathy was invented by a German doctor in 1802.

s/doctor/quack/

Chirp unveils free tier of shouting-at-IoT devices audio net tech

Stoneshop
Boffin

Re: Pet Safe?

including the odd human who could hear the base oscillator in greenscreen monitors when the computer was off.

Not that odd, it's just 15625 Hz, might be even lower depending on the free-running behaviour of the line oscillator. It was common for people to be able to hear audio frequencies that high if they hadn't been attending heavy metal/disco/house[0] concerts regularly.

[0] depending on decade