Putting politics aside (very hard with space stuff) congratuations to the hardworking engineers and scientists of the Chinese space programme.
Posts by 0laf
1967 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Nov 2009
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China's Chang'e-5 lands on the Moon to scratch surface
Arecibo Observatory brings forward 'controlled demolition' plans by collapsing all by itself
As if Productivity Score wasn't creepy enough, Microsoft has patented tech for 'meeting quality monitoring devices'
One would hope that most senior people would see the BS in this but then you can sell any old shite to a director if you dress that turd in a shiny enough suit.
I'm regularly in lengthy meetings where long sections have little to nothing to do with me, I would have though that I was actually being more efficient by fireing off emails whilst I'm not needed. But possibly MS says 'no' and it's going to tell the big boss I wasn't paying attention enough and I need my probes pushed in further.
Scotch eggs ascend to the 'substantial meal' pantheon as means to pop to pub for a pint during pernicious pandemic
Re: New products and opportunities
If you frequent your hostelry often enough "The Usual" is quite an acceptable term if you're on good terms with the bar staff.
At one point in my past a mate and I went to the same pub at the same so often that we'd walk in and find our pints on the bar waiting for us.
For every disastrous rebrand, there is an IT person trying to steer away from the precipice
Remember OGC?
Remember the OGC logo they spent 'a lot' of money on, rotated it looked just like a graphical onanist.
https://www.theregister.com/2008/04/22/ogc_logo/
A mate of mine worked for a Dutch oil company, "Dong Energy". Dong is still around and standing proud with their name.
It cracked me up.
Who knew that hosing a table with copious amounts of cubic metres would trip adult filters?
European Space Agency will launch giant claw that drags space junk to its doom
That'll be why there is that company (in El Reg recently) that has developed electrostatic ribbons (I'm science mangling) that could be extended at EOL and the electric charge was enough to increase drag and bring the sat down much earlier.
For old stuff you'd need a big transporter tug with lots of little rockets that could be attached to dud sats. Sounds feasible on the ground but probably not given how big space is, even in near Earth orbit.
TikTok given another week to sort out how to sell itself
Sopra Steria: Adding up outages and ransomware cleanup, Ryuk attack will cost us up to €50m
Re: Training
If training is a mitigation against the fines it's worth doing, considering how large the fines for GDPR are (at least the point of issue). It may only be marginally effective against the attack but even a small number of avoided minor incidents can easily make the training economically worth while especially if it is effective in stopping staff clicking on shit at home then taking days off to fix their mess.
The ICO expects DP training to be given to 95% of staff annually. Right down to your cleaning staff who may encounter presonal informaiton when clearing desks etc.
Having an insurance policy isn't the same as insurance paying out in the event you make a claim.
Ransomware taking out a large business smacks of a company paying lip service to the risk, not preparing for a known attack and probably not training staff to not click on phishing emails. Admittedly this may have been a targetted attack with well crafted emails but the characteristics of ransomware are well known, not new and mitigations can be put in place.
I would suspect the insurers will be investigating many ways to get out of paying.
If you have house insurance they won't pay out for a burglary if you don't lock your doors. I don't imagine cyber insurance will pay out if you haven't carried out best practice. TBh I don't know anyone that does, not really.
Privacy campaigner flags concerns about Microsoft's creepy Productivity Score
Re: Design vs Use
If it's anything like the "Secure Score" you get points for taking on risk through new products not minimising risk.
This sounds like your use of 365 tools will be monitored so to get a good 'score' I'd need to hammer Teams, Yammer, Streams etc with fatuous comments and emojis probably contributing nothing and not actually doing my job.
Mysterious metal monolith found in 'very remote' part of Utah
Retired engineer confesses to role in sliding Microsoft Bob onto millions of XP install CDs
NASA building network cables that can survive supersonic flight - could this finally deliver unbreakable RJ45 latching tabs?
The GIMP turns 25 and promises to carry on being the FOSS not-Photoshop
Bloated middle age beckons: Windows 1.0 turns 35 and is dealing with its mid-life crisis, just about
Mobile
WinMob 7 was supported by developers but MS kept moving the goalposts then brought out WinMob8 which was incompatible with 7 so everyone's work wa wasted. With MS track record of dropping support for its own products like a fresh turd no wonder developers walked away and put their effort into iOS and Droid.
Back OT I remember Win 3.11 being pretty functional and usable on today what looks like kit no more powerful than a calculator. It was pretty stable for me as well as long as you didn't ask too much of it.
Trump fires cybersecurity boss Chris Krebs for doing his job: Securing the election and telling the truth about it
Re: It is unclear what President Trump hopes to achieve
Think about how child-like people in position of extreme power act, CEOs, MPs etc.
They have live their lives with eveyone saying 'yes' to them or they have employees to ensure that the answer that comes back is always 'yes'. To not get what they want is a massive slap to a massive ego and they don't like it one bit. Humility is not really a known qualtity in those lofty circles.
Trump got the biggest ego boost ever to be voted in as POTUS. Not only was he handsome, intelligent, rich and famous, he was beloved by the people as well.
Now he's has the biggest slapdown going by being voted out after one term, he's being told he's old, dumb, broke and the majority of voters think he's an ass.
He's a very powerful child who has just had all his toys taken away and he doesn't like it one bit.
At least he can honestly be told he is still famous
Ticketmaster cops £1.25m ICO fine for 2018 Magecart breach, blames someone else and vows to appeal
Try to avoid thinking of the internet as a flashy new battlefield, warns former NCSC chief
Hyundai announces its own OS for Nvidia-powered smart-ish cars
Tim Berners-Lee asks everyone to do new biz a Solid and let him have another crack at fixing the Web's privacy
Something like this sounds more like a national utility service.
Nations could invest in the infrastructure where the business case is weak protecting citizens data whilst empowering safe and responsible data sharing.
Although that would require nations to do this altruistically and not try to corrupt the process for their own means.
Fuck all chance of that I suppose.
You can forget your fancy ERP customisations because that's not how it works in the cloud, SAP's Oliver Betz tells users
Ransomware crims read our bank balance and demanded the lot, reveals Scotland's Dundee and Angus College
Re: Fine Journalism
You've been unlucky, Dundee is one of the sunniest cities in the UK. The East coast of Scotland is a relatively dry part of the UK (hance all the soft fruit farming) and the dreaded midge isn't really an issue.
If you head along the river from Dundee you'll end up at Broughty Ferry which is the posh bit (fur coat and nae knickers).
Data protection scofflaws failed to pay £2m in fines from UK watchdog – and 68% of penalties are still outstanding
Re: Good luck getting the scumbags to pay
It' s not a bot it's just a recording with gaps for you to speak.
If you say nothing the recording continues merrily. I think that's just not fair, at least with a scumbag on the end you get to irritate them and waste their time by spinning them on a bit.
H2? Oh! New water-splitting technique pushes progress of green hydrogen
Liquid hydrogen
"It has nearly three times the energy density of petrol ".
Is that comparing liquid H2 with Petrol? Or Molar H2 with Molar petrol/ethanol (petrol being a mixture of molecule types).
Making and storing liquid H2 is non trivial so that's a fairly significant point to brush over and a Mole of gasious H2 is going to need a lot more space than a mole of liquid petrol even at high pressure
Google's home security package flies the Nest, Chocolate Factory pledges software support – for now
Luke Skywalker used to bullseye womp rats in his T-16 on Tatooine. But Star Wars: Squadrons misses the mark
Marriott fined £0.05 for each of the 339 million hotel guests whose data crooks were stealing for four years
A lot of this comes down to the ICO not having a big enough legal budget. Basically it can't afford to take on these big multinationals so it gives in when they says "how much to make this go away". Remember the ICO doesn't get to keep these fines they go to the Treasury.
Really the ICO should be able to hang onto some of this money to add to its legal fund to makes sure it is not in the same position next time of being unable to defend its own decisions.
Did I or did I not ask you to double-check that the socket was on? Now I've driven 15 miles, what have we found?
Re: Executives left in the dark
One of my common quips to IT is - If it plugs in the wall and doesn't make food it's IT equipment
In fairness the guys at IT and their managers seem to like to take on every electrical item. I think there is job insecurity that drives a lot of stuff.
I don't miss the screwdriver side of the work at all.
Days before the US election, phishers net $2.3m from Wisconsin Republicans
Oh, the humanity! Microsoft congratulates itself for Teams inflicted on 115m daily users
Teams works well enough. I hate the name since it sounds stupid to have a Teams meeting with your team.
It seem to rely a lot on other people muting and unmuting themselves.
Teams recording is a GDPR bombscare as it Teams chat since MS seem to think it's a good idea for everyone to have everything forever.
If any of this is fixable it is within the fiendishly complex 365 config. And MS move stuff every day.
But it's better than Webex by a mile and it's got flexible enough to let me tell the work Zoom fanbois to piss off and stick to Teams.
Experian vows to drag UK's Information Commissioner's Office to court after being told off for data-slurping practices
Report: UK colleges face testing times with ageing kit, iffy connectivity, and some IT staff supporting 1k+ users
ISS air leakage fixed in time for crew handover, thanks to floating teabag
Dulux feel lucky, punk? Samsung wades into paint world with interior emulsions designed to 'complement' your, er, TV
Vivo Las Blowers: Chinese smartphone brand hops into Europe's crowded mobe market
Rambo: First Bork. Turns out John Rambo is no match for a bad CMOS checksum
Gamers are replacing Bing Maps objects in Microsoft Flight Simulator with rips from Google Earth
British Airways fined £20m for Magecart hack that exposed 400k folks' credit card details to crooks
Who watches the watchers? Samsung does so it can fling ads at owners of its smart TVs
Even bloody Amazon gives you a discount to have the ads on the spash screen of their creations (or charges you to remove them depending on your pov).
I do have a SmartTV but I don't use any of it's smart functions at all, TV OSs are too clunky. I've no TV/Sat reception at all where I am so the damn thing is a glorified monitor anyway
But even the idea of this, even if it's only in the US (or probably post Brexit UK) would put me off going near any Samsung kit. Mind you I was already put off by their reputation for bloatware.
It's ont thing to offer a free service in exchange for advertising and tracking, but to make me buy the bloody thing first (I'm studiously ignoring mobile phones in this rant).