* Posts by Stoneshop

5951 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2009

We all hate Word docs and PDFs, but have they ever led you to being hit with 32 indictments?

Stoneshop
Devil

Re: There's a worrying implication

The loan officer wrote back saying the P&L document looked doctored and could Manafort please send a clean copy.

Mumble mumble BleachBit mumble Acidwashing mumble. And hey, clean as a whistle.

Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

Stoneshop

Re: Two stories:

Mails sockets with ancilliary 5v USB supplies seem to be a thing now.

Those have a SPSU in each socket, so not really a 12/24V distribution system.

Crunch time: Maplin in talks to sell the business

Stoneshop
Holmes

Re: But seeing in store

This is another reason why Big Box stores will be in trouble when Amazon brings you decent holographic imaging - you'll be able to see how big it is, will it fit in my space, etc. WITHOUT having to drive to the store.

Which will only work with Amazon's Alexa Holograph add-on. And you still won't be able to slam the tyres and kick the doors until they've added HoloTact.

Stoneshop
Headmaster

Re: Edinburgh Woollen Mill?

I can't wait to get my hands on some solar powered heated tweed gloves.

You're supposed to put your hand in them.

Stoneshop
Devil

Re: PWC is managing the process, we are told.

sold for £85 million to Rutland who will be lucky to achive a token tenner for a sale.

Three fifty and a kick in the nuts.

Hot NAND: Samsung wheels out 30TB SSD monster

Stoneshop

Re: urrrm

7*30TB 3.5" drives in raid10, one hot spare, ZFS and ....

Why RAID underneath ZFS?

Stoneshop

I have a compact case, and limited room for disks unless I duck-tape them to the inside of the case.

If you have one 5.25" drive slot, you can fit a 6-bay 2.5" hotswap cage, or even 8-bay if you use 7mm drives (most SSDs are).

Robot cars will kill London jobs – but only from 2030, say politicans

Stoneshop

or arrange to pick up the delivery from an agreed holding point, in which case there's no need for the delivery vehicle anyway.

It's not uncommon for a regional courier dispatch centre to be somewhere on some vast industrial estate somewhere way outside any population centre[0], inaccessible except by car, and open only during office hours. Moving your parcel to a pickup point local to you, such as a supermarket open a good deal longer, at least allows you to pick it up on foot or by bike. And one cargo slot can hold stuff for several recipients if it all has to go to that pickup point.

[0] worst case that I myself had had to deal with was right on the other side of the next town over, 30km shortest route straight through that town's centre, 40km if you took a more sensible route.

Stoneshop
Big Brother

Technology will solve that too

There will be no more "home delivery", as there is no way for the vehicle to place packages on or in the recipient's property - and no more post through the letterbox.

This will be solved by Amazon Delivery Boxes (a followup to the Amazon Key doorlock, for those in apartment buildings and council flats etc. not having their own private ground-level front door) and a robotic arm. And this Boston Dynamics door-opening robodog would also be a contender for filling the gap between the delivery van in the street and your cupboard or fridge.

(plus they're better at snooping than your average delivery driver.)

Sorry, Elon, your Tesla roadster won't orbit for billions of years

Stoneshop
Boffin

AU/Myr is a unit of speed

And 0.05AU/Myr is 7.4798935e+09m per 31556926e+06s, 2.3702858447 mm/s, or 3.9537712e-10 Ssx (Vmax of sheep in vacuum). The Reg Units Converter is unable to calculate this with sufficient precision to yield a number other than zero.

Stoneshop
Devil

Re: 1 Billion or 1 Million, seriously who bloody cares?

Starman was the corpse of David Bowie

Bowie was cremated, so he would be in the ash tray (provided the Roadster has one, not sure there). Starman is, in the proper supervillain tradition, Musk's arch nemesis, Jeff Bezos, and the appearance you've seen since the launch is a hologram run on AWS.

Stoneshop
Facepalm

Re: 1 Billion or 1 Million, seriously who bloody cares?

For you, maybe. I fully intend to live forever.

Eh, about that nick of yours ...

Bloke sues Microsoft: Give me $600m – or my copy of Windows 7 back

Stoneshop
Linux

Re: Re:Figure out your next step...

Tinkering with WINE indefinitely trying to get the software you need to run?

That would be "Spinning up a VM for that odd piece of Windows software that you still need". And my tinkering with WINE was limited to "Oh wait, better uncheck this option and let the installer finish first instead of starting the program with the installer still running"

Stoneshop
Linux

Superfluous step

1) erase disk

2) obtain a Linux DVD or USB stick

1) obtain a Linux DVD or USB stick

2) select "Use entire disk" as install option

You're decorating it wrong: Apple HomePod gives wood ring of death

Stoneshop

Re: One ring to rule them all ...

Der Ring des Nibelungen - Richard Wagner

Stoneshop

Design should include product testing.

Nah. That would imply Apple products aren't Perfect right from the first concept.

Stoneshop

only began to hit shelves earlier this year.

Which didn't cause stains (or dents, depending on the force of the impact) ?

Rogue IT admin goes off the rails, shuts down Canadian train switches

Stoneshop

Re: Was I the only one...

As in "this IoT thing is getting ridiculous, now the rails are network connected"

They are.

But generally the low-level control (relays or PLC-like units) is interlocked so that you can not direct a train onto a track where another train is present (except at switching yards where such a an action should be possible, although only at low speed). The network is used to send control messages to these low-level systems, with points, signals and block status being sent back. With the network out of action everything should come to a stop without creating hazardous situations.

National Museum of Computing rattles the bucket: Help shift war-winning proto-puter

Stoneshop

I would like to see the national museum of computing, but for me it isn't going to happen if it is inside the rip-off Bletchley Theme Park.

It is not.

Simply walk past the BTP entrance[0], turn left, and a couple hundred metres on you'll walk straight into the TNMOC.

[0] rude gestures entirely optional.

Equifax hack worse than previously thought: Biz kissed goodbye to card expiry dates, tax IDs etc

Stoneshop
Holmes

Re: National inSecurity

Could it be that the current head of the CFPB, Mick Mulvaney, is one of the Orange Turnip's cronies? There's also a certain lack of coincidence between the date of his appointment and the moment the Equifax investigation started to grind to a halt.

It took us less than 30 seconds to find banned 'deepfake' AI smut on the internet

Stoneshop
FAIL

Article author is female.

And they're not supposed to have a Mrs?

Wow, MIND-BLOWING: Florida Man gets an earful from 'exploding Apple AirPod' bud

Stoneshop

Even a NiMh battery can decide to burn for no apparent reason.

Well, given the extreme simplicity of the charging circuit (nothing more than a diode) as it is present in the IC (QX5252) that's in all these garden lights, there's a good chance that the battery can get overcharged on a sunny day. Especially a small 80mAh battery; they also come with a standard AA or AAA cell, which have some ten or more times that capacity and therefore won't overcharge quite so easily. Repeatedly overcharging is one thing what kills NiMh's

What did we say about Tesla's self-driving tech? SpaceX Roadster skips Mars, steers to asteroids

Stoneshop
Boffin

Re: idiot space do gooders

And if you contaminate Mars (or any of the other planets and moons) you won't ever know for sure whether there is, or was, contamination from elsewhere.

Stoneshop
Holmes

Re: Years from now...

That's why we need to be a multi-planetary spices.

Neptunian nutmeg, Mercurial mustard, Martian mint, juniper from Jupiter, Saturnian saffron and Plutonian pepper.

Stoneshop

Re: It was never going anywhere NEAR Mars

Have you actually calculated the probability of this thing striking Mars in, say, the next 10 billion years?

"A million to one", he said.

Stoneshop

Re: Tax write-off

Space history includes the story of a large UV transparent sapphire window, imported by JPL or NASA at great expense. They had to pay import duty / taxes.

There's also the trip expense claim from one of the Apollo astronauts. They also had to sign customs forms for the moon rock samples they took back.

Stoneshop
Trollface

Re: Tax write-off

I would be claiming the per-kilometer payment for using a private vehicle for business purposes.

Then the taxman cometh and wants to take a peek at the odometer.

Stoneshop
Boffin

Re: It was never going anywhere NEAR Mars

I'd rather like my space craft to be a bit more reliable, and for people to retain domain knowledge. Domain knowledge? There are enough (>=1) old-time rocket scientists who managed to point out problems with fuel, valve, and time-in-space problems with certain NASA missions, namely: don't use certain fuels for missions longer than a certain duration

And even though Ignition! has long been out of print (there's a reprint coming out), there are PDF versions of it aplenty. Very informative, and any rocket surgeon who hasn't read it shouldn't be anywhere near the propulsion side of things.

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)

Stoneshop

Wonder if the Tesla will outlast the Voyager probes?

The Voyagers are less likely to be hit by a stray lump of space rock. Also, any non-metal parts on the Tesla will degrade and crumble over time because they weren't designed with exposure to space-level radiation in mind.

It's quite likely though that a few hundred years on a metal hunk roughly the shape of a Tesla Roadster, with a desiccated human corpse with a few scraps of what used to be a space suit about it behind the wheel, will still be orbiting the Sun. At the same time the Voyagers will be hurtling towards AC+79 3888 and Ross 248 respectively, and probably more intact than that Roadster will be.

Ghost in the DCL shell: OpenVMS, touted as ultra reliable, had a local root hole for 30 years

Stoneshop

Re: The sky is falling in

SIMH is much easier to hide.

People have entire VMS clusters running on RasPis, and for shits and giggles you could stuff them, plus the network switch and the power supply in a uVAX2000 enclosure.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Another Amazon Key door-lock hack

Stoneshop
Facepalm

Re: Hmmm....

So, a card scraper (metal oblong for smoothing wood with a hook on the edge). Strong enough but could not be pushed hard enough.

So, I banged it a bit with a hammer and hey! presto! I was in.

Couple of years back we had a temporary office with a temporary computer room next to it. Then someone decided that we were not to enter the computer room, despite us needing physical access to some of the systems therein. This they thought to achieve by installing a code lock on the door. However, it was easy to circumvent: the door turned outwards, and the hook on the serrated knife on the Leatherman Charge was exactly what one would need to flip the bolt.

Stoneshop

Re: Still looking for an electronic lock...

I just need a lock that is locked when power is off,

Apartment buildings tend to have this; the simplest one is an electromagnet pulling on the day latch of what is apparently called a rim lock: a door lock that sits exposed on the inside of the front door. The loop on the handle of the lock in the picture is exactly for such a magnet.

You may want to add a switch sensing if the door is properly closed, and a mechanism to close the door if it isn't.

‘I crashed a rack full of servers with my butt’

Stoneshop

Re: VIP visitors

no rushing into the room shouting "which blithering idiot?".

Most assuredly a CLM, but correct nonetheless.

Stoneshop
FAIL

@DainB

That's twice in a week or so that you proclaim something that happened to be impossible.

You have clearly never been at the coal face of hardware installation, upgrades and maintenance, so kindly keep your trap shut on those matters because it annoys those of us who do and have done so for decades.

Stoneshop
Headmaster

Re: #metoo with a big arse

and thus turning off several office computers, lightning,

They were building Tesla coils and Vandergraaf generators?

Nunes FBI memo: Yep, it's every bit as terrible as you imagined

Stoneshop
Facepalm

Not so Carter Page

That's relevant because a subject aware of the attention may be expected to take steps to hide his tracks.

If someone involved in the campaign promoting a candidate for the US presidency has been working as an advisor to Kremlin staff not too long before is not subjected to some additional scrutiny, there's something very wrong.

Aside from that, have you read the transcripts of Page's interviews with the House Intelligence Committee? The only way he could increase the impression he's a Russian plant is by donning a pink tutu after learning some dance steps, getting on a piano and switching on the neon sign that blinks "Russian Plant" in Cyrillic.

Disengage, disengage! Cali DMV reports show how often human drivers override robot cars

Stoneshop
Boffin

Re: One intervention needed per 2km....

We would all be dead if that were true.

Errr, no. For every driver killed traffic density decreases, even if that's infinitesimally small at first. But with every such accident the traffic density, and with that the accident rate, will go down, with the accident rate asymptotally approaching the background level of 'immovable solid object fails to yield to vehicle'

Stoneshop
Headmaster

Correction

"While the above data shows that driverless tech is indeed still a while away "

ITYM miles away.

Astroboffins spot sneaky signs that the Milky Way devoured smaller galaxies

Stoneshop
Trollface

Re: All fairy tales.. fantasy numbers.. no science...

Very dismissive knowledge he has.

I know.

Usually I let it go, the stupidity tends to be obvious. But sometimes I figure it's time to rile him up again, and let him dig himself deeper.

Stoneshop
Coat

Re: Massive dwarf?

or because it's incredibly well endowed.

It's got huuuuge .... tracts of land.

Stoneshop

Re: All fairy tales.. fantasy numbers.. no science...

All these numbers are not facts but just fantasy.

Ah. And that's because of your saying so?

Uber saddles up for a new cycle of controversy

Stoneshop

Re: Locking to railings?

If people don't do this already why would they do it with a bike?

Because people rarely walk around with a chain lock for the purpose of randomly locking someone's gate. Plus that that lock, however cheap it may be, will have cost a few quid.

If, on the other hand, you get to annoy someone by locking the bike you need to park and lock anyway across their gate, then why not? Downside: being traceable via the bike rental database, at least if the rental site has moderately robust credential checking.

Crowdfunding small print binned as Retro Computers Ltd loses court refund action

Stoneshop
Coat

liquidate their asses

Oh, assets. Never mind.

Bring the people 'beautiful' electric car charging points, calls former transport minister

Stoneshop

Re: And where will they be?

taking themselves off to be charged at some compound and then coming back when summoned.

At least, if they haven't run out of juice halfway to the nearest charging point that's advertising as having slots available.

Well, now Nuro: Former Waymo devs reveal cute self-driving van tech

Stoneshop
WTF?

What's with the carrying handle on top?

"The R-1, as it has been named, is an electric driverless van approximately as long as a normal car, but half as wide, and has modular interior compartments for all your carrying needs."

Are they going to have matching drones?

NASA finds satellite, realises it has lost the software and kit that talk to it

Stoneshop

Re: Need help, NASA?

Bah they can't run any thing that new or fancy. Now call them when you have a PDp11

An 11/44, an 11/84 and two 11/73's

Stoneshop

Re: Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

Does not matter.

It wouldn't matter if that source code didn't have any platform dependencies.

If you happen to believe that, there's this bridge for sale. Low mileage, first owner.

Stoneshop
FAIL

Re: Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

So, which Unix would that be? SystemV or BSD family? Which architecture? Tru64 on AXP? HP-UX on PA-RISC? Solaris on Sparc? Plan9 (sounds quite appropriate for space-related stuff)? Coherent? SCO Unix? AIX? IRIX?

UK's iconic Jodrell Bank Observatory nominated as World Heritage Site

Stoneshop
Thumb Up

Re: Doesn't that mean the crap dish can't be replaced by new gear?

but I would rather have top gear getting new data on the grave of the venerable dish

So that they wioll detectan on-when the Vogons arrive the previous time around?

'Bitcoin heist' shock: Cops seek 4 for aggravated burglary in Midsomer Murders town

Stoneshop
Holmes

Re: If your BTC can be stolen by a single attack

It hinges on how much time the robber has to keep holding that gun against your head, versus the time delay in unlocking all the passphrase vaults protecting your cryptocoin.